August 2019

So August, then. Thirteen activities and just over six and a half hours of moving, which sounds reasonable until you put it next to July and realise I'd managed nearly double that the month before. The mix was the usual three-headed hydra of riding, running and swimming, with running doing most of the heavy lifting at six sessions and just shy of 46km — including what appears to be a "Hotel gym-tastic" session, which tells its own story about how glamorous the life of a travelling athlete really is. The London run was probably the highlight, and 17 personal records across the month is nothing to be sniffed at, even if some of those PRs were almost certainly set at a pace I'd be embarrassed to admit in polite company. The swimming ticked along quietly in the background, three indoor sessions and 5.4km, which is the aquatic equivalent of maintaining the status quo.

Comparing it to July is a slightly uncomfortable exercise, if I'm honest. Twenty-six activities down to thirteen, 591 minutes down to 406 — so roughly a third less of everything, which is either a sensible mid-summer consolidation or a polite way of saying August got away from me a bit. The riding took the biggest hit, dropping from fourteen rides and 70-odd kilometres to four rides and 22, which suggests the commute wasn't happening with anything like the regularity it probably should have been. So going forward the honest lesson is probably a familiar one: consistency matters more than the occasional burst of enthusiasm, and "Hotel gym-tastic" is not, it turns out, a sustainable training strategy.

Summary generated by Claude