July 2019

So July turned out to be a reasonably solid month, all things considered. Twenty-six activities and just under ten hours of moving — which for a British summer is either impressive or a sign that the weather was better than expected (it was). The riding was the busiest it's been for a while, with fourteen rides covering 70-odd kilometres, most of them the kind of unglamorous commute-to-the-gym-and-back efforts that don't exactly set the pulse racing, though apparently my heart rate disagreed at an average of 145 bpm. The running was the highlight though — eight runs, 55 kilometres, and a frankly suspicious 52 achievements and 14 PRs, which either means I'm getting faster or Strava has very low standards for handing out badges (probably both).

So compared to June, the numbers are up across almost everything — more activities, more time, more distance — which I'd like to attribute to disciplined summer training rather than the fact that all my June running was on hotel treadmills and gym machines going precisely nowhere. Getting outside made a real difference, and you can see it in the elevation; the rides in July climbed nearly twice as much as June, and the runs actually involved hills rather than a moving belt and a TV screen showing Homes Under the Hammer. The swimming dropped off a little, which is probably fine, though I suspect "Swim part one" and "Swim part two" being logged as separate activities tells its own story about motivation on that particular day. Still, the trend is heading in the right direction, and if I can carry this into August without the wheels coming off, there might actually be something worth racing towards before the year is out.

Summary generated by Claude