Tuesday 1 December 2020

Another one down...

 ...and there was November, done! It really does feel as though months are flying by now - possibly a good thing allowing for how 2020 has shaped up, but it remains to be seen how different the start of 2021 at least will be! 

Lockdown 2 has in many ways been less challenging than the first one - for me, at least. The lack of socialising is starting to bite a bit now - MrEH is routinely speaking with people on a daily basis for work, but I realised the other day that I can now go days at the time without speaking with anyone other than him, the checkout staff in Aldi or saying hello to random strangers in the street while out walking. 

On the subject of walking - it’s been a good month for it! 


We even managed to start the month with a bit of Underground Overground walking - although on some of this stretch the walking shares the above ground but with the trains too! It was great to be able to revisit this project for the first time since the pandemic took hold, although definitely odd getting onto the tube to do the return stretch back to Leyton!  

Running has taken a back seat a bit this month - I took a week out at the start of the month through conscious choice to try to ease out some niggles, and have cut back a bit on running elsewhere in the month too - ended the month on 8 runs and 35 miles. I have however now got only 12 miles to cover for my 500km annual challenge, which I’m pleased with! A series of bad runs also left my confidence somewhat knocked - so I’m now working to tackle that - the first stage being realising that where I’ve been doing run/walk intervals I’ve been making the run intervals too fast - often, for me, the trade-off of trying not to look at my watch too much. Yesterday mornings run started tackling that with a much closer eye on a far slower pace leading to far more running than walking and an improved overall pace. I've got caught by this before - getting torn between not wanting to rely on tech too much (because we are told it is a "bad" thing to do) and ending up not pacing myself well, so that is something to remember and take forwards again now.

Also positive during the month was the amount of stretching I managed to fit in. I gave myself a 7 hour target at the start and have exceeded that slightly, and in the process I've started learning what sorts of stretching and mobility work suit me and are most beneficial.


I’m planning to leave that time target in place for December, too - although it might drop off a bit during the Christmas period depending on what else is going on! 

December's aims are going to be to wrap up my annual running challenge and get that submitted - and otherwise just to try to maintain a decent level of activity. Strength & stability work needs more focus this month so I will be aiming to beat November's figures for those. Our morning walks (with additional distance top ups on days I am not running) will continue.  Away from fitness, I want to start building structure back into my days a bit more - from part way through lockdown 1 I began to struggle with an endless list of things to do, and the right thing for me at that stage was to let structure go, to a degree. Now though it's time to start rebuilding that I think, so I'll be doing some thinking about how best to tackle that. 


Robyn

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