June in review: Slowing down on the bike and run a bit

It's been hot, and stressful, and my hip didn't cooperate for a good chunk of June. So I wasn't surprised when I added up my numbers and found that I'd done less in every discipline compared to May. May was something of an anomaly, but I was hoping I could keep my running and trainer riding up, at least. Oh well.

My hip flexor started giving me grief mid-month, so I had to take a bit of time away from running. I think it was a combination of running with bad form while tired, plus crappy daily posture not sitting at a real desk anymore. It seems to be mostly back to normal now with stretching and rest, but I'm still doing only short and easy runs for the time being. I did get to ride my bike outside last month, and swim in a pool, so those were big victories for me.

I needed to take days here and there for mental breaks, as well. June started off with Black Lives Matter marches, city curfews, unrest, and big discussions and changes happening in local government. Michigan relaxed some of its Shelter in Place restrictions, and then a bunch of morons got more people sick and guess what, we are back to square one. The joke going around is that watching the states shut back down is like doing all the work in a group project; well, I did all my work back in March and April, and now I am failing the class anyway because of selfish people. It's so damn frustrating.

A tiny slice of good news is someone who works closely with my husband was sick, and his Covid test just came back negative. We've been hunkering down this past week even more than usual as a precaution, and I am happy that I can (carefully) probably get back to the outdoor pool and maybe do another outdoor bike ride soon. July is off to a slow start so far, but I'm hoping to get back into a groove.

June was:

This is pretty consistent bike volume, and I'm happy with that.

Bike: 12 times, 11 on the trainer with 205.5 fake trainer miles and 1 on the road with 33.38 road miles, for 16:19 total. This isn't a bad month at all; I only skipped one mid-week trainer ride all month. I would have liked to get on the road a few more times, but I don't trust other people to social distance, so my options are limited to going out on my furlough days. That will be a goal for July. Overall, I am feeling pretty strong on the bike. I should do another FTP test but I kind of don't see the point right now. I think I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing for now and call it base building.

My run mileage dropped off a bit, but overall I'm happy with the volume.

Run: 10 times for 62 miles in 10:29. I did not mean to run 100 K exactly but that was fun to see. June started out with two good weeks, then the hip strain, then two very easy weeks. I also randomly logged the fastest mile I ever ran since I got my current Garmin. I'm probably going to be off speed and long runs for a while, but the good news is things are feeling better. Well, it's probably not a huge loss because it's beastly hot out right now anyway.

Weights: 7 times, 3 online barre classes + 3 heavy/body weight session + 1 video, for about 8 hours. I'm actually really happy with the consistency here doing my heavy/body on Saturdays and then a video or online barre during the week.

PT: 11 times for about 6:25. This was three times per week for three weeks of the month so I'm counting that as a success. Three times seems to be that sweet spot where it's doable and I'm reaping significant benefits. The 6:25 isn't really accurate as it really takes me 1.5-2 hours to do all my exercises, but since I am usually making dinner or watching TV, I've been using 35 minutes as the guesstimate of actual PT time. One of these days I will use a stopwatch and calculate how many minutes it actually takes!

Yoga: 6 times for about 1:45. I will take it!

Swim: Once in the POOL for 2000 m of mostly drills in about 1:05. I was just so happy to be in the water, I don't even care how long it took me to do my drills. I would have liked to get in a couple more times, but I will have to fit it in my schedule on days when I know the pool will be less busy.

Total: 47 sessions in about 44 hours. This is pretty close to what I did in March and April, so I'm not mad. Like I said, May was kind of an anomaly. Not a great month, but a solid month, and I was able to work around some setbacks. Yay!

There's no real point to mileage or volume goals right now but in July I'd still like to get back to my usual running routine; bike outside a few times; go swimming; and keep up with the weights, yoga, and PT. Train enough to keep me sane — maybe that should be my motto for time being.

Stay safe and for God's sake, stay HOME if you are sick!!!!