Monthly Summary – May 2015
May was a busy month. Work was busy, life was busy, training was busy. For me, that’s a good thing. I like being busy. Especially when it’s a well-rounded type of busy like May was.
Quick recap of May:
- I ran my first race since Badwater. My performance at Whoo’s in El Moro 25k wasn’t anything special, but I had a ton of fun, got to see a lot of friends and it did feel good to race again. It was a mostly last-minute decision to do the race, but I’d been running well and figured that 25k (15.5 miles) wouldn’t be too bad. I’m very happy I didn’t get too ambitious and try to jump back in with anything longer! With a busy June and my looming surgery, I won’t be racing again any time soon, but depending on how things go, maybe I’ll be able to get something in in the late fall or winter.
- This weekend was a family friend’s wedding in Temecula. My whole family was there and we had a great time together. They pretty much couldn’t tear us away from the photo booth. Or the desert table!
- I ran and swam a lot. In both cases, more than I have in many, many months. It’s all summarized below, but I was in a groove this month. I spent a lot of time on the trails and even got to run with Aaron this morning in Temecula. I’ve almost forgotten what it was like in late 2014 and earlier this year when I couldn’t run.
Here’s my tally of my “performance” this month against the six goals I’ve been keeping in mind recently. The red is my evaluation of how I feel I did in May:
- Eat better. I’m in a really good rhythm with eating. I’ve been working hard on reducing the amount of processed sugar in my diet. I have a sweet tooth, so it’s not always easy, but I notice how I feel when I’ve gone a few days without it (or with just a little bit) and really notice it when I indulge, like I did at the wedding last night. One of my problems with sweets is that when I start, I have trouble stopping. And it’s especially bad when there’s a lot available for the taking. If I don’t eat any at all, I’m fine, but once I let myself have a couple cookies or a bite of cake, boom! The next thing I know, I’ve eaten ten cookies, two pieces of cake and pretty much whatever else I can find. Seriously, I woke up this morning feeling hung-over (which still hasn’t totally gone away) and that definitely wasn’t from the half-bottle of beer and couple sips of wine I had. I’m not going to even try to eliminate sugar altogether, but I need to continue using it as an occasional treat.
- Focus on getting better sleep. I slept well this month. I’m still getting used to the early morning runs again, but as long as I get to bed at a reasonable hour, waking up at 4:15 isn’t that bad. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.
- Continue swimming, yoga and strength training on a regular basis. And again, a “biggest month ever” for swimming. I swam 18 times for a total of over 60,000 meters. I didn’t do the 1,000 yard time trial or the 75 x 100 yard (or meter?) swim that I had planned on doing. But I was very consistent with my workouts, getting to the pool 4 or 5 times every week. Elizabeth and I went to yoga, once. On May 1st. I had planned on going back, but it didn’t happen. I was consistent with the strength training. I’ve got a good variety of core, upper body and lower body exercises that I do once or twice a week.
- Run easy. Maybe hit the trails for some easy training. I can probably take this goal off the list. But, that would just be tempting fate, right? I’ve been running well for three months and this was, by far, my best month of running since last July. I ran 130 miles, most of which was on trails. I ran Los Liones with Chamoun every Tuesday during the month and most Thursdays as well. Most of my running was “easy”, but I did give it a stronger effort a few times. I did almost as much climbing in May as I did in the previous four months. The best thing about my running in May was that I was having fun.
- Be positive. This was pretty easy in May.
- Read at least one book, hopefully two. I read two books in May, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen & The Greatest Race Ever Run, by Matt Fitzgerald. All the Light We Cannot See was fantastic. It’s wonderful historical fiction about the lives of a German boy and a French girl in World War II. It’s beautifully written and I felt like I could see the characters and their surroundings. Iron War, on the other hand, was just eh. The story of the race itself (the 1989 Ironman World Championship) is very compelling and that part of the book (50ish pages near the end) was great. The rest of the book – backstory on Dave Scott and Mark Allen, some exercise science and other stuff felt like filler to make this isn’t a book long enough to be published. One other part of the book that hit me was a background theme about the psychological battle an athlete goes through and having (like Dave Scott) or developing (like Mark Allen) the ability to over-ride the brain when it tells you to slow down or give up. Connect with me on Goodreads!
Once again, I didn’t finish my #100FewerThings. In fact, I didn’t work on at all, again. And I got Rich Roll’s new book, The Plantpower Way and gained a pretty rad hat my parents brought me from China. So I’m now at 82 -2 = 80. Maybe I’ll do it in June?
For June, I’m excited to be headed to San Diego 100 next weekend to crew and pace Elan. He paced me (which involved a lot of waiting around and then walking) at my San Diego 100 race in 2013 (check out my race report and a video that Billy put together of my race). He is in sick shape right now and running really really well. I’m psyched to help him crush the race. Then, at the end of the month, I’ll be crewing and pacing Billy at Western States. It’ll be fun to be there to help him get the sub-24 that he just missed at AC100 last summer.
Here’s May by the numbers:
Swim: 60,471 meters
Cycling (outdoors): 0 miles
Run: 130.5 miles
Total Run Elevation Gain: 21,018 feet
Strength Training/Yoga: 7 sessions
Approximate monthly total training time: 47 hours
Weight: I’m guessing it hasn’t changed much, but I haven’t been on a scale