A post-vacation wrap-up of the last week, month, and whatever else

I didn't fall off the planet. I was on vacation last week in COSTA RICA! It was my first time there and I hope not my last, because it was so beautiful and there was so much to see. We stayed in San Jose for a few days and on the beach in the jungle (literally — we were woken up at an ungodly hour by howler monkeys every day) for a few days. I speak a bit of Spanish so I could get around, order food, and follow along, but I was glad to have a native speaker with me on my travels.

We visited the sloth rescue, of course.

As you can imagine, I had a LOT to do the week before an international vacation, and I only got two days of training in as a result. I got my hair cut Monday after work, and did bike and PT both Tuesday and Wednesday, so at least I did something. I dedicated Thursday after work to errands and after working late Friday (barf) I still had to take the dogs to my parents'  house, pack, clean, and do all the other oddball things you don't want to worry about while you're gone. It all got done, we made it to the airport butt-early, I only forgot a few things, and we had a great time.

I left off summing up the week of February 19-25 so let's pick up from there.

Week of Feb. 26 through March 4:

I only worked out four times, PT and bike each Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday I did a trainer ride and my PT homework, and Wednesday I did a PT session and a few trainer miles afterward to make 112 for the month (Ironman distance). It was a total of almost exactly 3 hours working out.

Week of March 5-11:

I didn't do a thing except 12-ounce curls =) and some walking around. Unless you count an honest-to-God Home Alone-style sprint through the Charlotte airport to barely make our flight — we had a 55-minute layover during which we had to go through customs and immigration, re-check our luggage (?) and go through security again (?). My husband didn't even have time to put his belt back on until we were on the plane, lol!

Month of February:

February wasn't bad overall. The largest portion of my training time went to PT and rehab, with 18 sessions in about 12 hours. Next was biking, with 12 sessions on the trainer for 107 fake trainer miles, plus a 1-mile warmup at the start of my five PT sessions of the month for a total of 112 miles. It was nice having an actual goal to work toward again.

I also swam twice to make 4000 meters (also the Ironman distance), did upper body weights and abs three times, and did a random online ballet class when I was snowed in earlier in the month. Overall, it was 36 sessions in about 28 hours. I really can't complain at an average of an hour per day.

Not terrible, and a decent amount of PT/rehab and biking.

Compared to January, I did a little less PT and rehab in February, but I dropped down my in-person sessions to once per week, too. I did 13 PT homework sessions both months, so that's good. I also swam and lifted weights the same number of sessions, but I did much more biking in February. The extra biking made up for most of the additional sessions and hours spent doing some kind of training.

Since I did this for January, let's also take a look at my loose goals for 2018 for February:

Work through my health issues and re-start a training schedule that gets me back to racing. Still working on this, but I feel I'm getting closer. I can do things like bend my knee! And walking (usually) doesn't hurt!

Run some cool places, maybe another marathon. Still working on this one, too. The jury's still out on when I can get back to running. A 5K might be my stretch goal for the year.

Work on whole-body health, incorporating things like yoga and pre-hab. I still do a decent amount of stretching as part of PT, but I haven't done a standalone yoga session yet.

Keep a healthy work-life-training-family-friends-other balance. I actually hung out with friends a bunch of times this month! I am not a hermit! But I still need to work on going to bed earlier. As I type this in my bed with the alarm set to go off in 7 hours.

Have fun. In addition to hanging out with four different friend groups, I also gave blood, got a haircut, and stepped out of my comfort zone a few times. (I am going on the record to say I have given escape rooms two different tries and they are officially not for me.) I made some good memories.

March is almost half over and I haven't done any training yet, but I'll get to it tomorrow now that I am back in the country and on schedule. I have to work off all that sangria, yuca chips, and mango. =)