A look back at January

January breakdown.

January training wasn’t as terrible as I feared it would be. Yes, it was frustrating that my attempts to swim and bike had to be dialed back a little. But the theme of the month was physical therapy and I did a LOT of it, both at the clinic and at home.

I got the month and year off to a good start with a New Year’s Day barre class and jumped into physical therapy the next day. I started back with easy-ish Trainer Road workouts, and tried a real swim later in the month, but after more tenderness in my knee I stepped it down to easy spins on the bike only, and pull buoy swims only. One week my knee was hurting enough that I did nothing but PT.

I tried, I really tried, to stay positive and think more about what I COULD do than what I couldn’t. But it’s hard. I had to pass up an indoor triathlon I’d wanted to do, and my Facebook memories are reminding me of the 30-mile weekend I was training for this time last year. I can’t help but feel angry, frustrated, and sad that I am so restricted from the things I love and that help keep me healthy. But I don’t know what else to do other than keep plugging on. The month of January was a perfect example of plugging on, doing what I could.

My monthly totals were:

Swim: Twice, both in the pool, for 3600 meters in about 2 hours. No surprise that I am super slow, especially considering I’m really only using my arms after having swum only a handful of times last year.

Bike: Five trainer rides for about 53 fake trainer miles in 4:45. (This official bike total doesn’t count the easy warm-up spins I do before my PT sessions.)

Weights: Two barre classes at the beginning of the month and then my upper body and abs routine at home once, for about 2:30 total. I seriously could barely move my arms after trying to do chinups for the first time in forever, so I have some work to do.

PT and rehab: 21 sessions, including 8 in-person physical therapy sessions and 13 “homework” sessions of the exercises given to me to work on, on my own, for about 11 hours total. 11 hours total!!! This is exponentially more than I did all of last year. I have a lot of work to do (I am still hilariously bad at anything to do with balancing) but my therapist says she is starting to see my hips and hamstrings get a little stronger.

Total: 31 sessions in about 20 hours, 13 minutes. When you look at it as one per day average for the month of January, I guess it’s not bad!

NB: I didn’t do any official yoga in January, I realized as I added everything up, but I DO do a decent amount of stretching as part of my PT.

For accountability’s sake, let’s also take a quick look back at my loose goals for 2018:

Work through my health issues and re-start a training schedule that gets me back to racing. Well, this PT is hopefully sending me in that direction, and I am optimistic even my easy swims and bikes are allowing me to maintain some multisport fitness. And I had a good doctor’s visit earlier this month that confirmed we’re moving in the correct direction with my thyroid and overall health.

Run some cool places, maybe another marathon. I think a marathon is out this year, but maybe I will be able to do a fun 5K in a few months.

Work on whole-body health, incorporating things like yoga and pre-hab. As noted, I do a decent amount of stretching as part of PT, but I’d like to better incorporate standalone yoga into my routine, too.

Keep a healthy work-life-training-family-friends-other balance. Still working on this. I need to get to bed earlier, for one. But just looking back at my calendar, I see that I hung out with friends a bunch of times and family at least twice in January. So I’m counting that as a win.

Have fun. I did do some fun stuff this month! I made some yummy food and delicious treats, I tried a few new breakfast spots, I spent time with family, I got back in the pool, I finally saw the new Star Wars movie, I took a day off to fart around and run errands on my own time. I didn’t take any exotic vacations, but I still have some good memories of January.

Of course I had room for improvement, but overall I’m happy with how January shook out. Hopefully I can use that momentum for an even better February.