May 2021

So May ended up being a fairly solid month all told — 39 activities and just under 1,760 minutes of moving about in one form or another, which sounds impressive until you realise that a large chunk of that is simply walking. Twelve runs covering 92 kilometres at an average pace of 5:18 per kilometre suggests the legs are ticking over reasonably well, even if no one is going to be troubling the podium any time soon. I also managed to drag myself to the pool for a single 41-minute swim (2.1km, which I'll take), and squeezed in a handful of FiiT workouts that my heart rate data suggests I was at least conscious for. The walks — all 22 of them across nearly 104 kilometres — are doing a lot of heavy lifting in that activity count, but at this point I'm counting steps and I'm not ashamed of it.

Comparing back to April, the headline numbers look similar on the running side: one more run, about 2.5 kilometres further, and almost identical pace, which is either reassuring consistency or a polite way of saying I haven't improved at all (probably the latter). April did throw up 26 achievements and 6 personal records, which May conspicuously failed to match — just the one lonely achievement this time around. To be fair, the lighter evenings and improving weather in May meant the walks were more pleasant, which probably explains why I logged more of them and slightly fewer walking minutes overall as the pace picked up. So the picture going into summer is cautiously optimistic: the base is there, the FiiT sessions suggest I'm at least attempting to do something about strength, and if I can resist the temptation to let a nice evening become an excuse to stroll rather than run, June might actually look a bit more purposeful.

Summary generated by Claude