I stopped writing “month in review”s in February because my statistics show that nobody ever visits this blog. “Why bother?”, I thought. But almost a year later I realize (once more) that by regularly scrutinizing my training (and related factors) in semi-public, that I might hold myself more accountable; and therefore make better progress towards my goals.

Track running: December saw a very clear focus on track work. I did 14 track workouts, both outdoors (6x) and indoors (8x). The latter number was amplified by participating at the FLA training camp during the Christmas holidays. I’m thankful that the federation allowed me to participate, even though I noticed a number of times that I’m far removed from my peak performances. Still, you play with the cards you’re dealt with, and I hope the effort I put in increases my odds of doing well during the January competitions. In mid-December, I did a 300m at the Indoor Laf Meeting which was not very good.

Road and trail running:  With such a clear focus on track, the need for recovery and busy days at work I didn’t get out nearly as much as I liked. Consequently, I only did one single long trail run (12km) in early December.

Walking: I only walked 33km during the entire month, which therefore sits as one of my least active months this year. Again, work is partially to blame: it’s much easier to just grab food at the nearest place during lunch than to go on a reasonable (4-5km) walk and grab something to eat on the way.

Cycling: This month, cycling was impacted in the same way as walking. With daylight being nonexistent outside of work hours, I should have gone out on bike rides in my lunch breaks, but didn’t. I still got 82km in (in 4 rides) with 799m of vertical gain, and 3h53 in the saddle.

Weight training: Strength training was nonexistent this month, apart from a few sessions at club training, for a total time of just 2h19.

Total time outside: 18h34

Average body weight: 82.43kg. Body fat 15.48%. This is a fairly significant change for the worse, after doing quite well for much of the year. Since November, I’m up over 1.4kg and almost 1% of BF.