Augtober and other temporal anomalies that make little sense

Hanging on to my goal of at least one post a month, just barely.

But, we here, even though time feels like it’s racing past faster than ever. So, let’s catch up.

July – she was a strange one. It had lovely points, like Krause Springs, multiple long hikes at McKinney falls, and cooler weather than normal so I was still very happy running and walking in the outdoors. Normally by July it’s full-on summer (read: 105, feels like the center of the sun) but it waited an extra month and I am thankful as heck for it.

However, I also had a week where I was sure I was getting sick (and turned out to just be bad mold allergies), and I was dealing with an interpersonal issue that was really frustrating me (not anyone close to me or family). A bit of vagueblogging here – but you know when you’re so frustrated with someone you consider doing what’s necessary to remove them from your life? Of course, the easy way is just to ghost them, but when that isn’t really possible without consequences you don’t like, you have to step up and wear the big girl pants and deal with it. July was about feeling the frustration come to a boiling point, and finally dealing with it.

The effects there included some over-indulgences. I finally fell off tracking instead of just tracking late. I stopped tracking daily on July 19, and I picked it back up, ironically enough, on August 19. So, a full month off. I have also been VERY lax about tracking my weight, I shouldn’t even hazard a guess, but if I did, I think I may be 1lb up since the beginning of July. With what I’ve been putting in my stomach, I don’t think it’s unfair. I earned it. 😛

Here’s the activity calendar. Note there’s a LOOOOOOT of walking here that doesn’t show up except in the totals. Most days have a walk, in fact, I hit a 1-mile per day 30-day walking streak over vacation. Yay me!

I didn’t do the BEST job at keeping up with weights (more like 2x week than 3 on average) and you can easily see the week I thought I was getting sick (July 22) where I didn’t run but once. I mean, I went seven miles because it was a nice cool day and I felt good again, but I was doing a better job earlier in the month to be more consistent. Still, 7-11 hours of activity per week is not shabby.

Let’s all laugh at the idea of adulting in the hot summer during a month when we were particularly stressed out and move on. Oh, wait, I think we cleaned off the spare bed in Joel’s new office. That’s something! Check!

I was able to finish Krause Springs photo editing the day before we left for Vermont, but I absolutely did not touch my book in the month of July. The Muse was a little apprehensive about my mood and decided she would maintain her distance. I did read a heck of a lot, tearing through a 9 book Superhero series called “Wearing the Cape”. I started the first one on the July 4th camping trip and finished the last one the first day of our Vermont trip August 1st. We also were engrossed with all the Olympic coverage when we weren’t traveling, so a lot of my leisure time went there.

Let’s talk about August, since it was sort of a turning point. A transition, if you will. And I have yet another trip to go on so it will probably be a little bit before I get back here so consider this a 2-in-1 monthly recap.

I had a very lovely Vermont trip. The cooler weather was amazing. The hikes were gorgeous. The towns were adorable. There’s nothing more than I love getting out into nature and also exploring a town on my own two feet, and we did so so so much of that. I will certainly make a post about this one – I’m wildly behind on my travel blogging and I may start skipping some of the shorter camping trips to places I’ve been before – but Vermont was worth it, even if I get to it months later.

I did actually try to track a little starting at the beginning of vacation. I made it four days, and I was very much over every day. I could have made better choices, but Stowe, Vermont seems to focus on really good “bar food” so I had lots of sandwiches and burgers and fries and beers and the like. To say we stayed active was an understatement with about 30 hours/60 miles from Aug 1-10 alone of tracked activities, but I’m pretty sure I still outpaced my burn with my consumption.

That also is considering Tuesday, Aug 6th, we climbed a mountain and I sprained my ankle as we started the descent. That’s a story for another post, but thankfully it still held my weight (was just a bit unstable) and I made it down on my own accord and was able to walk after. The next day, it was pretty darn sore so I was able to slowly walk to lunch and dinner (about 2 miles total), but that was it. After that, it felt better, but only had about 3-4 miles per day on it before it got really sore during the rest of vacation. Different than the 10+ miles most days that we were used to, but we made it work.

It was perfect timing that my training focus when I returned from vacay shifted to triathlon for the next 7 weeks. On Monday, August 12, I started a bike streak (since I couldn’t run yet). I stopped that bike streak 5 days later when I forgot you needed to build up saddle toughness to bike every day. I haven’t been on a bike in months. My arse really hurt! However, I’m at 105 miles biked in 2 weeks – hitting 5 days per week. Four days on the trainer each week at 30-40 mins a pop, and one slightly longer outdoor bike on the weekend. My ankle is healed enough that I actually ran my first mile off the bike today – in 9:19! I haven’t run that fast in forever.

Swimming has been a challenge. Last week, we packed for swimming on the way home on Tuesday. That didn’t happen. Nor Wednesday or Thursday. It took us ’til Saturday to actually make it to the gym (but hey, one swim down, and somehow it was faster than normal after roughly 6 months of not swimming?). This week, I resolved to do better. I walked to the closer gym with the crappy pool Monday. It was closed – someone threw a rock through the window and there was broken glass. They assured me it would be open the next day. I figured it would take a bit longer and gave them ’til Thursday, where it still wasn’t fixed. I did weights and the stair stepper instead, so it wasn’t a wasted trip, but still frustrating when the process of just getting to a swim is a big chore. Drove to the nice gym again today, and wouldn’t you know it? I had another lovely swim in my favorite pool, it’s just a level of oomph I can’t find to get there during the weekdays. If I can make it to the pool once a week, I guess it’s better than nothing.

I’m back to 3x week strength and plan to maintain that even if I’m mostly doing it at home vs the gym for a bit. I plan to get back to sessions with the Squat Witch a little in Sept and hit it hard in October and beyond.

In September, I need to hit some race prep milestones:

• I need to ride my TT bike outside. I’d like to do this twice, in the kit I plan to wear, with a brick run at the end. I’m super skittish on this bike since I’m out of practice so it needs to be early in the morning on a weekend with no traffic.
• I need to open water swim with my swim skin. Ideally twice as well.
• Not race prep, necessarily, but get some faster intervals in on the run (now that I’m sure my ankle can handle it)

And, after September 28th, we shall go back to hiking, running, and strength as the primary workouts to train for fall trail races and winter road races. I DO see the value in a 30-minute trainer ride that takes 35 mins total to execute, instead of a 1 hour+ walk to burn the same number of calories. In lovely weather, when I’m not imminently training for a race, and I have the time? The walk will win hands down. If time or weather is a factor? Biking is fine. I get to watch a Bloodbowl game. It’s not the torture I had built it up to in my mind since I’d been away from it for so long.

Just a few words on calorie input/output – I’m back to tracking and that’s going… okay. I will try to do it while I’m away, but not stress about it, and then when I’m back from my trip, I’ll actually work on balancing the bank account with daily activity and what goes in my mouth. Like, daily. Instead of catching up a few days later.

Adulting will resume later. This is about the time of year it falls off and that’s ok. We accomplished the big important things and when things slow down and it gets cooler closer to the holidays, we usually do another big push. I have projects I’d like to get done and I need to schedule some checkup type doctor appointments, but that’s a fall problem.

I am very pleased to report that I’ve started Book #3! And… in 2 writing sessions, I’ve knocked out over 12k words. This one is just flowing well, and who knows – I might actually meet my goal to have it done by the end of the year. I haven’t made final first-pass edits to Book #2 and that’s okay, I’ll save it for when I get stalled out on this one and need a way to distract myself.

I haven’t been motivated to paint anything, and I have just barely started the project to organize and edit all the smaller trips and day hikes from earlier this year. I realized the latter is because my bluetooth mouse has become unreliable and you just CAN’T edit photos without one. So, another one is on the way, and perhaps that will pick up soon.

So, September. What’s up, ninth month of the year (how so fast?)?

• Survive/enjoy the upcoming work trip
• Track food, like, for reals, to reinstate the habit and weigh myself to get some current metrics
• Triathlon training and race prep and go race with joy and fire!
• Keep chugging along through Book #3’s crappy first draft
• Work on photo editing the little projects

Hopefully in September’s recap, I will have better metrics to show and not just excuses. By October, I have no excuse to have excuses… hopefully.