July 2023

July clocked up 28 activities and just over 23 hours of moving about, which sounds respectable until you notice that 16 of those activities were walks. Still, I'll take it. The running was actually the highlight — 8 runs covering 49.1 km at an average pace of 5:29 per kilometre, which is a modest improvement on where I've been, and the 4 PRs suggest something is quietly clicking into place even if it doesn't always feel that way from the inside. The HIIT sessions were, as ever, the ones I have to talk myself into hardest, and 4 sessions in a month is about my upper limit before I start resenting the alarm clock. The walks — nearly 100 km worth — are partly the British summer doing its thing, where it's actually bearable to be outside without immediately regretting it.

So compared to June, the activity count dropped from 41 to 28, and total time fell from nearly 31 hours down to 23, which on paper looks like a step backwards. The walk total in particular collapsed — 16 activities versus 28 in June, which probably says something about how July actually played out week to week rather than any grand plan. The running distance went up though, from 40.7 to 49.1 km, and the pace improved by around 13 seconds per kilometre, which I'm choosing to interpret as progress rather than a fluke. Going into August, the honest goal is to keep nudging that running base upward and resist the very tempting logic that a brisk walk definitely counts as cross-training.

Summary generated by Claude