February 2023

February was, by my own admission, a fairly steady month rather than a spectacular one. Forty-five activities and 1,772 minutes of moving about the place — which sounds impressive until you realise that over 1,200 of those minutes were walking, which I'm fairly sure doesn't count as heroic. Still, eleven runs covering 54.4 kilometres with an average pace of 5:34 per kilometre was a slight improvement on January, and I even managed two PRs in there somewhere (I'll take those wherever I can find them). The highlight — if you can call it that — was the Hotel Dreadmill sessions, which tell their own story about February travel and the grim necessity of running on a conveyor belt in a basement, staring at a wall. I did manage to get outside for a handful of Lunch Runs and Morning Runs, which in a British February feels like something of a small victory.

So compared to January, the numbers are actually down — 60 activities and 2,001 minutes versus this month's 45 and 1,772 — which on the face of it looks like I've gone backwards. January did have more variety to it, with rowing, proper workouts, and even a swim making an appearance, whereas February felt a little like I'd quietly dropped a few things and hoped nobody noticed. The rowing sessions halved, the workouts disappeared entirely, and the HIIT, while slightly more frequent, was running at a lower average heart rate, which suggests I wasn't exactly pushing myself into uncomfortable territory. What it probably means going forward is that I need to find some kind of event to train towards, because left entirely to my own devices in the dark and the cold, I will apparently just go for long walks and call it fitness.

Summary generated by Claude