Cycling Longest: 72,64km ride around Lac du Bourget, France Most elevation gain: 1419m up Relais du Mont du Chat Total distance: 2859km / Total elevation: 30,253m Running Longest: 14,93km run through the Haard nature reserve Most elevation gain: 1233m from Chamonix almost to Col du …
After a slower week, I felt that I needed to increase both the quantity and quality of my training efforts. Other commitments and bad weather meant that 2 of my workouts were on the treadmill, but I appreciated the challenge of that. Monday, January 25: …
I knew going into this week that scheduling training efforts would be more challenging. I had a training course I’d need to follow every work day from 9am to 5pm, which pretty much coincides with daylight hours during winter. I didn’t sleep well most of the week and those days I didn’t manage to get moving early enough before the training course started to still get an effort in; and then by the work day was over I was too tired to still head out in the dark. So I’m marking 3 days as “fail”.
Monday, January 18: No training. Fail.
Tuesday, January 19: No training. Fail.
Wednesday, January 20: 8.7km early morning trail run in 1h02
Thursday, January 21: 30min on the treadmill (run/walk), 403m elev gain. 3.5km.
Friday, January 22 No training. Fail.
Saturday, January 23: 12.6km trail run in 1:22
Sunday, January 24: 13.6km hike in 2h17
On a positive note among all those failed days, on Wednesday I got out for a sunrise run and on Sunday I did a long(er) hike in fairly nice light (for photography) and weather.
I also managed to set a personal benchmark of climbing over 400m of elevation on the treadmill in a half-hour effort. Over time, I hope to reach 500m in 30 minutes; as well as the elusive target of climbing 1000m in an hour.
Week 3 was going to be my first “office” week for the year. This meant I was a little bit more time-constrained since obviously I was leaving 1 to 1.5 hours every day to commuting. I still managed to perfectly execute my plan of moving …
Week 2 has been one of the better starts into a new year. I got out for at least an hour every day, and I tried to be smart enough to alternate running and hiking days so as to not overload the various systems in …
How many times do I need to say “I want to revive this blog”? Actions do speak louder than words, and if I look back at the archives there are a lot of gaps. No monthly updates (because I haven’t been proud of my monthly efforts), no race reports (because there have been no races), no adventures or challenges (because it’s easier to watch those on Youtube than actually attempt my own), no nothing. I’ve long given up any aspirations to produce anything that reaches a significant audience, but that has in turn caused me to be even less productive – if there’s no audience, why do I even write anything down?
So let’s try something new: weekly training updates. Not so much because anyone cares, but because maybe putting something out there will help me be more accountable to myself. Maybe if I force myself to “publicly” review my week in training every Sunday, I’ll notice patterns where things went wrong and then not repeat those patterns the following week.
Friday, January 1st: 27.4km (1h15) ride on the road bike
Saturday, January 2nd: 9.7km (1h00) trail run
Sunday:, January 3rd 35.6km (1h43) ride on the road bike
I’m pretty happy with how that started. From here on out, the goal is to get back up to a reasonable monthly running volume (200km seems to be a good target), and if I want to be in decent shape for any summer mountain adventures (if they are possible, that is) then I need to get back into days with more “time on my feet” as well as more elevation gain. Building up some leg and core strength that I’ve lost over the years wouldn’t hurt either.
Some numbers for 2020. I walked/hiked 309km with 9300Hm of vertical elevation (of which 4900Hm were on the treadmill). (2019: 559km/12300Hm) I ran 974km with 21800Hm of elevation. (2018: 588km/14000Hm) I cycled 3452km with 34000Hm of elevation (2018: 4431km/36700Hm). I cycled to work (and back) …
Running: 131.6km / 2382m elev / 13:33:32 total time Walking: 93.79km / 1841m elev / 19:39:53 total time Cycling: 323.50km / 2812m elev / 11:31:43 total time Total time outside: 44h45 Average weight: 82.1kg / Average Body Fat: 15.6% September was a marked improvement over …
Running: 28.37km / 444m elev / 2:47:40 total time
Walking: 22.60km / 309m elev / 3:44:14 total time
Cycling: 416.19km / 4120m elev / 18:54:07 total time
Total time outside: 25h26
Average weight: 82.8kg / Average Body Fat: 16.3%
Well, those are the cold hard numbers. My fitness has gone down a lot in 2020, and my body composition has suffered. The silver lining over the past couple of months has been an increase in cycling kilometers; but that in itself has not been enough to revert the trend.
Some numbers for 2019. I walked/hiked 559km with 12300Hm of vertical elevation (of which 3800Hm were on the treadmill). (2018: 460km/7300Hm) I ran 588km with 14000Hm of elevation. (2018: 1698km/50200Hm) I cycled 4431km with 36700Hm of elevation (2018: 2331km/16900Hm)