Today, Wednesday, September 5, 2018, is maybe the single worst day I have ever had returning to work after a vacation. I would probably rather have come back and had a colonoscopy administered by a cement truck driver. So I will skip the daily commentary and rewind to something I wrote yesterday morning, before the oral surgeon went medieval on my ass.
The August, It Recaps
August has come & gone, we have bled into September, and I am late on my monthly assessment as the month flip happened when we were in Canada. Let’s embark on the August rundown now that we have some time to look back on the summer that is fading from memory. And just to be sure that you know we are talking about August, let me say August in this paragraph a few more times so you know it's August.
Exercise total was 51.85 hours, which is a tad off my June & July pace but with intention. I had been keeping a 2 hour/day average but with my diving into this cross plan, that idea goes to the junkyard and I move forward with the 21 week plan to get me to Louisville, a decision which I will probably be questioning until the day I wake up and say to myself, “Yeah, I willingly chose to go to Kentucky. What's wrong with me then?” I am still on track to hit all goals in regards to exercise this year. I am averaging over 50 hours of exercise a month through 8 months.
23
blog posts, 23 average on the year. I have established writing as part of my routine, and have started to think of some non mountain bike-specific writing projects to work on. I am sitting here writing this from the living room of an Airbnb in Vermont (with f'ing flies landing all over me) and this is the second time I have sat down to write something today. I’ll do a daily blog post from the car or at home later today, then maybe write again for a 4th time late tonight. I also attribute some of this to not having my phone distracting me at the moment. As I mentioned in one of my posts on vacation this past week, I need to strongly assess my phone use. I really want to plug it in at night out of arm’s reach from where I sleep. It’s a really bad influence to my having a full life.
Update: I have a few strategies for @StayHydrated in mind
Also 23
non-work things in August, 24 on average, and 195 in total. I have started to feel more normal this past month. My boss has put me on the shelf in terms of travel because he thinks I was traveling too much and with the wedding coming up, he knows that life is going to be hectic. So I’ve had a normal work life this past month, which is nice in terms of finding some sort of routine. Some of the things we did this month:
- Raystown trip with Alex & Mark
- Six mile solo
- Gurney lane with the kids
- Cranks Around the Campfire - Mooch & Stephens
- Lewis Morris solo
- Mont-Tremblant trails
- Taconic with Alex & Mark
- Dick Mine with D & Utah
- Mahlon Dick with Utah
- Ramapo hike to the castle with the kids
- Black River Roaster in an attempt to work remotely one morning
- Met up with the caterer for a tasting
- Canada trip to the cottage
- The 4H fair
- 2 podcasts
My
weight is actually the same as June. While this is sort of a big fat “meh,” I also have some experience here. I chalk this up to 2 things. First is training, which historically makes it hard to lose weight while you are doing it. I beat the drum of nutrition but that also means taking in calories. If you want to be strong, you need to eat. Eating comes with the caveat that it’s harder to lose weight. Also, training typically means fewer 3 hour rides, which also cuts into 2 things: calorie burning time and non-eating time. The second is that I have been traveling less (for work). The more I travel, the more I seem to be able to control what I eat, just because I am so busy on those trips. But I am generally ok with sticking at this “just over 200” realm for the time being. I dropped weight, now I can normalize, get strong for Kentucky, end that run, then dive back into huge volume, weight loss mode. Maybe I can dip below 200 through the season but it is not really a priority right now.
I read 5
books in August. The Sympathizer, which was an excellent fiction book about the Vietnam War, then 4 eBooks: Infinite, and the 3 Murderbot books (4th comes out in October, YAY!). This was a great month of books and I credit/blame the Kindle for that. This is at odds with my whole “put the phone down more” exploration I want to do. I need to figure out a way to continue to e-read as well as not be on the phone so much, which is sort of like saying I need to consume more cheese and cut out the dairy. 24 books this year, 3 on average.
@jmanic did come up with a good suggestion and when I switch to VZW I'll have 2 iPhones since my mom changed her setup and I am currently using her old one. I may convert that into a non-social media device.
Watched 1
movie, John Wick, It was terrible. It would have been better to watch none. It would have been better to have some teeth removed. Or maybe not.
Did 17 things
socially. A bunch of these involved
@2Julianas &
@MurderBort, including parts of 5 days on the Raystown trip, the 3 days at Cranks, and a bonus meet up at Taconic where I crashed again. Almost half of our social outings involved them in some way. We also hung out with a bunch of people at Cranks, had dinner with D’s old coworker & her husband & step-daughter, hung out with
@seanrunnette twice to podcast (plus Cranks) as well as
@fidodie for 1 of those, went to that fair with the Kubick’s,
@UtahJoe a few times on the mountain bike, had breakfast in Montreal with Tony, then saw Oma & Opa to end the month.
508 days
non-drinking. I don’t know if this remains “a thing” in 2019. I will keep the tally, I’m sure. But after 500 does it now only become an issue if I break this streak? I am convinced now more than ever that drinking is a horrible idea for me. At the end of December, I may be saying the same thing about Kentucky. But for now, I can say that as I assess my history of 2018 (to this point) that so much of what I/we do is made possible by letting go of the alcohol. I’m sorry to beat this drum so much - I know it's annoying. But it’s been really great in allowing me to just feel so much better all the time now.
I have been thinking of ways to improve this lifestyle tracking for
next year, and what next year will bring in terms of this blogging effort. I think that the 1 thing missing from this daily/routine assessment is a sleep count of some sort (oh and hey, maybe f'ing dental care while we're at it?). As I put all the pieces of everything together, it really stands out that I do not track sleep at all, and I probably skimp on this aspect of my life. To be clear, and I know this of course, but sleep is probably more important than ever to get right. I have read before that you sleep less as you get older (though in looking into it more, it appears that part of your brain just starts to rot away - my words) which does not really jive with my current lifestyle in trying to get as much out of life as possible. Anyway, regardless of my brain rotting, I have started to track sleep as well, with my goal being a daily average of 7 hours a day. I'll see how September goes but after 5 days, I am just above 7 hours a night which is where I want to be. Sure, 4 of those days were vacation but...
Writing & sleep ideas noted above. Aside from that, I have nothing of note to add just yet. We've got 1/3 of 2018 left to bring home yet.
