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: 55min on the treadmill with 12% incline. 30min run, 25min walk. 717m of elevation.

Tuesday, January 26: 10.5km trail run with 300m elev gain in 1h06.

Wednesday, January 27: 1 hour power-hike on the treadmill with 12% incline. Worked hard to maintain a 6.5km/h average speed. 823m elev gain, the most I’ve recorded in an hour on the treadmill so far.

Thursday, January 28 5,7km recovery walk in the forest.

Friday, January 29: 11.3km trail run with 313m elev gain in 1h15.

Saturday, January 30: 6.8km recovery walk in the forest

Sunday, January 31: 14.4km trail run with 373m elev gain in 1h32

Weekly total: 19km hiking with 1549m of elevation; 42,4km of running with 1696m of elevation

My Sunday “long run” is slowly starting to live up to the name again. The last time I went further than 14k in a single effort was a whopping 12 months ago.

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 outside for at least an hour a day, every day.

Monday, January 11th: 10.2km trail run in 1h02

Tuesday, January 12th: 6.4km walk in 1h01

Wednesday, January 13th: 10.4km trail run in 1h02

Thursday, January 14th: 6.4km lunch walk in 1h03

Friday, January 15th: 10.4km snowy trail run in 1h06

Saturday, January 16th: 8.4km walk in deep snow in 1h37

Sunday, January 17th: 10.4km trail run in a mix of snow, ice and slush in 1h10

Overall, running every other day and going for walks in between worked quite well. I didn’t feel overly fatigued.

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 my body that may have gotten out of the habit of daily movement over the past few years with its various health challenges (plantar fasciitis, broken toe, lock-down motivation issues).

Monday, January 4th: 10.0km trail run in 1h06

Tuesday, January 5th: 6.4km hike in 1h03

Wednesday, January 6th: 10.1km trail run in 1h06

Thursday, January 7th: 7.8km hike in 1h13

Friday, January 8th: 10.7km trail run in 1h06

Saturday, January 9th: 10.2km hike in 1h42

Sunday, January 10th: 10.7km trail run in 1h04

That translates into 41.6km of weekly running volume and 24.5km of low-impact hiking on top.

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.