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Here’s December:

Swim: 24,500 meters

Cycling (outdoors): 46.0 miles

Cycling (indoors): 0:30 (hours)

Run: 141.2 miles

Strength Training/Yoga: 2 sessions

Approximate monthly total training time: 37.75 hours

Weight: 168 – I finally got a scale a couple times this month and I was pretty surprised.  I’ve been assuming all along that my “normal” weight is in the low 160’s and my weight in the height of training is high 150’s.  But I weighed myself a few times this month on different scales and it consistently came up right around 168.  The increased swimming has probably added some muscle mass to my upper body and swimming makes me ravenously hungry, so I’m eating more too.  Also, all those damn holiday cookies looked just too good to pass up.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I’m too heavy and this is a good winter weight, but I know that I’ll want to drop 5-6 pounds once I get back into true race prep.  I also know that once I start ramping up the running, that will happen naturally.  

After taking that break from running in November, thankfully, I was able to get back into it in December.  I didn’t run a ton and didn’t push it.  My longest run was 11.5 miles and most of my runs were in the 6-8 mile range.  But I have been getting somewhat back into the rhythm of running – the best part (and a hard thing to get back into, especially during the dark winter mornings) has been getting up early a few times a week to hit the trails around sunrise.  

I got on the bike – once.  I made it to the pool 12 times, which is a ton for me.  Swimming with Evan definitely has made swimming fun – and we rarely do any individual swim longer than 150 meters, which helps break up the monotony of staring at the black line on the bottom of the pool.  I think that doing these short, mostly anaerobic swim sets is a great compliment to my mostly long/slow aerobic run training.

One casualty of the time I took off in November is the Goofy Challenge races that I was planning on doing in Disney World next month.  I made the decision pretty early this month and it was a relief to be able to be able to get back into running without the stress of getting ready for that many road miles.  I know it would have been fun, but the lack of motivation to train and the struggle that Elizabeth and I were having to make the trip work with our schedules made bailing the obvious choice.

And that’s a perfect segue into a different Disney experience – the other excitement this month was my first trip to Disneyland in over 20 years.  Elizabeth and I joined Loren and Charlie and our cousin Emma and her five year old daughter, Lucia for a day at the park.  We happened to go on one of the busiest days of the year and the park was packed to the gills with people.  We spent much much MUCH more time waiting in line than actually going on any rides, but it was still a super fun day.  My favorite was the Dumbo ride:

2012 Annual Summary to come soon!