Middle-aged people are not worse than young people at long distance running. The current male world record for the 24-hour run was set by Yannis Kouros at age 41, and the current female world record was set by Mami Kudo at age 45 (Wikipedia).
I really want to revert the endurance requirement to what it said before you changed it, because I'd like the tasks to come with a sense of challenge and accomplishment if at all possible. Making some pancakes for the first time will certainly feel to me like "wow, I made some pancakes!" Running a mile for the first time feels like "wow, I ran a mile!" (That should've been in all caps, the feeling is so intense!) Walking 30 minutes for the first time... feels nothing like that...
Ok so we need a better understanding of what level 1 means then.
I was comparing it to the "strength" level-1 which is given as "untrained"... ie what you could possibly reasonably do without needed any time training - even though it might feel like an achievement to do it for the first time... and the particularly unskilled in an area may have to do some training to get there.
Walking 30 minutes for the first time... feels nothing like that...
Not to you it might not... but I'm guessing you're probably fitter than average, though you ...
I just got this random idea that people who want to become better at life could benefit from a common scale of "leveling". No, I don't mean vague Lesswrongey things like "changing your mind". I mean a set of concrete criteria like "you qualify for level 2 if you can do 5 pull-ups, have solved 30 Project Euler problems, and did 10 cold approaches". Obviously there would be separate ladders for different character classes, but not too many. Also obviously, my example was a bit too high for level 2. So I guess I really want to ask some meta questions here:
1) Do you think agreeing on a common leveling scale would be a good thing for a substantial subset of LW users? Would you feel good about leveling up and telling other people about it on LW?
2) Is there some good way to determine leveling criteria that are neither too high nor too low? Maybe make an intermediate scale of "experience points"?