Week 10: The Whole Point
Best Health in a Lifetime — Week 10 Check-In
My mother Barbara turned 85 in February.
We waited until June to celebrate. Winter is not the time to gather a large group around an 85 year old woman you love. So we planned a party for the spring and then the spring became June and last Saturday we all descended on Jersey City — my family, my sister Vanessa and her boyfriend and her two sons, cousins, Barbara’s friends from where she lives, long time friends who have known her for decades, and even a handful of my college friends who came because that is the kind of woman Barbara is. People show up for her.
Seventy days into a project about health and fitness and data and supplements and stress management, I found myself standing in a room full of people celebrating an 85 year old woman who still commands that kind of loyalty and love, and I thought: this is what it is all for.
Not the resting heart rate. Not the HRV score. Not the long bike rides.
This. Being present. Being well enough to enjoy it. Being strong enough to still be standing at the end of a weekend like that.
The Storm
Saturday evening, mid-party, a freak storm rolled through the New York metro area.
The wind came first. Then the rain. Within minutes the screens on the screened-in porch at the restaurant were literally torn off by the force of it. Everyone scrambled inside, plates and glasses moving, laughter and chaos in equal measure.
It was, honestly, perfect.
You can plan a party for four months. You can wait for the right season, get the guest list right, find the right venue. And then a storm shows up and tears the screens off and everyone ends up crammed inside and somehow that becomes the story everyone tells later.
Barbara laughed. That tells you everything you need to know about her.
The Next Day
Sunday we went to Yankees versus Red Sox. Me, my wife, and our daughters. The Bronx on a June afternoon, one of the oldest rivalries in American sports, the whole family together in the seats.
I want to be honest about what that felt like after 70 days of this project. I was present in a way I am not always present. Not checking the stress score in my head. Not thinking about what the data would say in the morning. Just there. In the seats. With my family.
That is not a small thing. For someone who wakes up at 3am running through personnel decisions and organizational problems, being genuinely present at a Yankees game with my wife and daughters is a metric that doesn’t show up on the Oura ring.
But it’s the one that matters most.
And Then the Travel Home
Sunday night we tried to fly home to Norfolk.
The flight was delayed. Then cancelled. We rerouted through Detroit, missed the connection, caught a flight after midnight to Richmond, took an Uber from Richmond to Norfolk to retrieve the car, and walked through the door at 4:15 in the morning.
Monday morning my Oura ring showed a resting heart rate of 46 bpm.
Forty-six. On 2.5 hours of sleep after one of the most chaotic travel days of the year.
That number is 30 points lower than where I started this project. Thirty points. The body that showed up to board that first delayed flight in New York is not the same body that started tracking its metrics on April 1st. The foundation held under conditions that would have wrecked my recovery numbers three months ago.
What 70 Days Actually Builds
I started this project because I was watching my health drift in the wrong direction. The numbers told a story I didn’t like and I decided to do something systematic about it.
What I did not expect was that the project would clarify the why so clearly.
The cardiovascular work, the supplements, the weighted vest walks, the bike rides, the daily protein targets, the sleep optimization — none of it is the point. All of it is the point. The distinction matters.
You build the body to live the life. Barbara at 85, surrounded by people who drove hours to be in the room with her. My girls in the seats at Yankee Stadium on a Sunday in June. The ability to absorb a 4:15 AM arrival and still function the next day.
That is the return on investment for 70 days of discipline.
What I Have Been Reading
I finished Malcolm Jenkins’ book this week and started David Sinclair’s Lifespan.
The progression feels deliberate even though it wasn’t planned that way. Jenkins gave me the emotional layer: what happens when high performers ignore the cost of chronic stress until the body forces the conversation. Sinclair is giving me the scientific layer as to why the body ages, what the mechanisms actually are, and what the evidence says about slowing the process.
I am only a few chapters in but I already recognize the science underneath several things I have been doing intuitively for ten weeks. More on Sinclair as I get deeper into it.
The Week in Numbers
This was a recovery week after a hard stretch. The data tells the bounce-back story clearly.
Steps over 10,000 every day this week. Weighted vest walks at 28 lbs becoming the anchor of the evening routine. For example Tuesday’s walk covered 2.05 miles in 39 minutes at an average heart rate of 119 bpm. The vest is turning an evening walk into a genuine cardiovascular session.
RHR dropped from the post-travel high of 72 back down to 58 by Monday night, then 54 by Tuesday. The recovery arc from a 2.5 hour sleep night took less than 48 hours. That is the fitness base doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
Protein on target every day. Full stack maintained. Weight at 191 to 192 — still hovering, still watching, still more interested in the cardiovascular story than the scale.
Sleep is improving. The 9h 25m night on Tuesday — in bed before 10 PM, the earliest bedtime of the project was the body reclaiming what Sunday’s travel chaos took from it.
What This Project Is Actually About
Ten weeks in, I want to say this directly.
I am not doing this to have impressive numbers. I am not doing this to write a health blog. I am doing this because I want to be the kind of person who shows up fully for the moments that matter. Barbara’s party. The Yankees game. The weighted vest walk with family on a Tuesday evening in Virginia Beach.
The data is the instrument panel. The life is the destination.
Seventy days of work has made the instrument panel look dramatically better. More importantly, it has made the moments feel different. More present. More earned. More worth showing up for.
That is the whole point.
What are you building your health for? The specific moment, person, or reason underneath all the metrics. I’d be curious what yours is. Drop it in the comments.
Just amazing, Marc!