September 2015

September, then. Thirty-one activities logged, which sounds impressively committed until you realise that twenty-nine of them were Boris Bike commutes — so really I spent most of the month cycling to work and calling it fitness. Still, 41.8 km in the saddle and 149 minutes of pedalling is better than nothing, and at least the Boris Bikes are doing most of the structural suffering for me. The two runs I did manage came in at 23.8 km and 161 minutes total, which felt like a reasonable return for the amount of lycra-related faff involved. Eight PRs across the running suggests my standards were admirably low to begin with, so every small effort is apparently a personal triumph.

Compared to August, the numbers tell an honest story. I rode more (29 rides versus 14) but ran considerably less — six runs and 41.4 km in August down to just two runs and 23.8 km in September, with total active minutes dropping from 388 to 310. So as the mornings got darker and the temperature started suggesting that perhaps staying indoors was the sensible option, the running quietly fell off a cliff while the bike commute ticked along out of sheer necessity. The pace also crept slightly slower, from 6:34 to 6:46 per kilometre, which I'm choosing to attribute to autumn conditions rather than fitness going backwards (though both are probably true). Going forward, I suspect the Boris Bike will continue to do the heavy lifting while I negotiate with myself about getting the running shoes back out before January.

Summary generated by Claude