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Monthly Summary – December 2014

And with that 2014 is done. Overall, it was a pretty great year. I’ll do an “Annual Summary” post next week (hopefully).

In September, I started framing my monthly summaries with a few goals. These days, my training isn’t what it used to be and I don’t have epic runs or other craziness to write about each month, so these help me think about the past month and give me something to work towards in the next month. The red is my evaluation of how I feel I did in December:

  1. Eat better. Holy crap. Major fail. I ate like shit this month. I proved beyond a doubt that t is possible to have an “unhealthy” plant-based diet. So much sugar and junk. I let the holidays dictate my diet and be my excuse. It’s been fun, but this has to change.
  2. Focus on getting better sleep. Yeah, sure. I’m sleeping. Maybe too much, which makes me even more tired. Recently, I’ve started swimming in the morning before work which forces me out of bed with a purpose and gets me to bed earlier. That helps.
  3. Continue swimming, yoga and strength training on a regular basis. I nailed the swimming again – my biggest month since I stopped doing triathlons and one of my biggest ever. I even had a couple nearly 4,000 meter swim sessions (huge for me). Swimming is pretty much the only thing I really enjoy that I can confidently do without the worry of re-aggravating something these days. I’m becoming a decent swimmer, especially for a non-swimmer. I got to the gym for regular strength training and spent some time on the elliptical. I haven’t done yoga in a while – I think the stretching was actually more harmful than helpful so I’m letting some things heal before I go back to the yoga studio. 
  4. Run easy. Maybe hit the trails for some easy training. Nope, barely put on my running shoes, nothing on the trails and no at all running since mid-month.  It was one thing after another – hamstring, hip, adductor, knee. I’ll try again in January.
  5. Be positive. An up and down month for my attitude, but recently, I’ve been feeling more positive.
  6. Read at least one book, hopefully two. I only read one book this month – Fourth of July Creekby Smith Henderson. It was a really good one; among my favorite fiction of the year. I track all my books on Goodreads, so if you’re on Goodreads, connect with me there. I also discovered “longreads” this month. They’re those long articles that I always see in magazines like The New Yorker and put aside to read later but rarely actually get to. They’re fascinating little glimpses into current events or social issues or history. The length is perfect. I find that they usually take me two or three sessions to read and they have enough depth and information to keep my interest without getting bored. Some of them have inspired me do further research on the topics. Two great resources are longreads.com, which is dedicated to the form (their favorites from 2014 are here) and The Daily Beast, which has a page dedicated to the best each week. Two of my recent favorites are one from Texas Monthly about a grisly triple murder in Waco in 1982 and one from GQ about little league in Camden, New Jersey.

Besides the swimming, the highlight of December was probably the little kitten that Elizabeth and I saved from the street the other night. We are definitely not “cat people” but the little guy (who I named “Blue”) was so cute. Elizabeth heard him crying while she was walking the dogs late Friday night. He was hiding under a neighbors car. We spent well over an hour trying to coax him out from under the car but it wasn’t until we offered him a bowl of milk that he came to Elizabeth. He was hungry and tired and cold. After bringing him into the house, Elizabeth brought him to the shelter and we are keeping track to make sure he gets adopted.

blue4

Here’s December:

Swim: 34,039 meters
Cycling (outdoors): 0 miles
Run: 15.5 miles
Total Run Elevation Gain: 1,226 feet
Strength Training/Yoga: 8 sessions
Approximate monthly total training time: 23.75  hours
Weight: 162

Happy New Year!!

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