March 2020

So March, then. Thirty-five activities and 1,410 minutes of moving about the place, which sounds impressively busy until you remember that roughly a third of that was walking the kids around the block because, well, that was suddenly all any of us were doing. The running was where things actually picked up — ten runs, just shy of 99 kilometres, and an average pace of 5:25 per kilometre that I was quietly pleased with, even if my heart rate averaging 168 bpm suggests my body was rather less relaxed about the whole thing than I was. Eighteen PRs across those runs, which either means I'm getting fitter or that the "Monday Runday" and "Wednesday Runday" outings were largely flat and I shouldn't read too much into it. The Joe Wicks PE sessions — Days 3, 5, 6 and 7, since apparently I skipped a few — rounded things out nicely, alongside a solitary swim and one yoga session that I'm choosing to count as a spiritual achievement regardless of the 22 minutes and 72 bpm suggesting I was basically horizontal.

Comparing back to February, the numbers look like a genuine step forward — almost 100km of running against February's 43km, and 1,410 total minutes against 994 — though the honest explanation is that I suddenly had nowhere else to be. The commuter cycling that filled February (four rides shuttling to and from the big smoke) disappeared entirely, the pool visits dropped from eight swims to one, and the walking more than doubled, which tells its own story about the month. So in one sense the fitness is building, the paces are improving, and the volume is up; in another sense I've essentially been doing laps of the neighbourhood with increasing desperation. Going forward, if I can keep the running base without relying on a global pandemic to clear my diary, that would probably be ideal.

Summary generated by Claude