January 2024

So January turned out to be a reasonably solid month, which frankly surprised me given that it's January and the default setting for January in the UK is grey, cold, and deeply uninspiring. Fifty-two activities and just over 40 hours of moving about the place, which on paper looks impressively busy and in practice felt like a lot of early alarms. The bulk of that came from walking — 25 outings covering nearly 160 kilometres with close to 2,700 metres of elevation, which I'm choosing to count as proper training and not just "going outside." Running held up reasonably well too, with 15 runs totalling 76.6 kilometres at an average pace of 5:26 per kilometre, though I'll note that 12 of those were on a treadmill, so the British weather was very much winning that particular argument.

Compared to December, the numbers are meaningfully up across the board — 52 activities versus 31, and over 40 hours active against December's 25, which sounds like I had some kind of dramatic new year transformation but is probably more accurately explained by having fewer Christmas parties to attend. The HIIT sessions nearly doubled, the running almost tripled in distance, and even a solitary swim appeared, which felt noteworthy enough to mention even if 1 kilometre is not exactly Channel-crossing territory. So the direction of travel is good, and if I can keep the consistency going into February without the novelty of a new year carrying me along, that would be the real test — it usually is.

Summary generated by Claude