November in Luxembourg is when the weather takes a turn for the worse and when daylight hours get sufficiently short so that it’s still dark before and after work; somewhat impacting my options for commuting and sports in general.
Track&field: This month, track&field was the culprit in my “I don’t have endless energy to spend” priority system. A number of times, I was too tired or demotivated by cold and wet weather to still head to the track at 6pm after a full work day. In November, I only recorded 3 track” training sessions, but of those only one was actually on the track. 1x hills, 1x stairs, 1x sprint endurance.
Road and trail running: Road and trail running was on an upswing. I was running on 12 days, but since I run-commuted to work three times, that’s actually 15 separate outings. I competed once in November, a 18km trail race with considerable elevation gain (465m). In total, I covered a total of 149km with 2647m elevation gain; and spent 14 hours 16 minutes outside.
Cycling: Since the bike infrastructure on my work commute isn’t particularly safe during dark and wet winter months (with reduced visibility), I found it difficult to justify the risk of biking to work often. I only did so on 4 days (8 rides), for a total of 200km and 7 hours 29 in the saddle.
Walking: One advantage of colder temperatures is that I can walk more during lunch without breaking out a sweat. I did 54km, which translates to 11 hours 2 minutes of time spent walking outside.
Weight training: I actually managed to spend one hour in my fitness room at home, moving iron. The day after, it was evident that this uncovered some weaknesses (ie. I had sore muscles) but yet I was unable to repeat this for any more sessions.
Body composition: As usual in winter, my body composition takes a hit. When I’m too tired and/or stressed at work, I get careless with my food intake. I tend to make bad decisions for lunch (often getting some tortilla chips or similar fast food snacks along with regular lunch) and over-eat in the evening. Compared to October, my average body weight went up a little (78.31 to 78.86), as well as my body fat (13.30 to 13.67).
Documenting it all: It’s been about a month since I merged my “blog” and my “homepage” to be a combined personal blog on ckemp.com. The idea was to streamline things and to post more often. I managed to get a few race reports posted, but I’m still not caught up with past reports, not am I posting enough meaningful up-to-date content. Then again, Google is not sending any visitors, when I do link the posts on Facebook and/or Twitter only a handful (at best) people show up; and I get close to no reaction. So if nobody cares, why do I? It’s OK to just document all these things to preserve personal memories, but sometimes I wish there was some more external motivation, too.