With the pool closed now, I have been a couple of things fitness-wise, frazzled and lazy. I mean, it is going to take me a couple solid weeks to find a rhythm and routine again, and one of those fail points is definitely reared up as my lack of logging of everything here. Yeah, I haven’t posted—not that anyone but me is checking, but accountability is accountability, even to oneself.

So I figured I would do two things: (1) try for a running streak in September and (2) reset this log starting on last Saturday (back in August) when my running streak properly started. 

So Saturday, huh? Yeah, I woke up feeling motivated and drove down to Park Run. I don’t want to say I’m a rare participant in Park Run but the August long weekend was only my second outing of the year and my ninth overall.  The vibe is that of a race, even though people have literally argued with me about this online, but for me it checks enough boxes—start and finish lines, timed results, online records, lots of participants—that I feel like I’m racing, so I try a bit harder. As it was I pushed myself and came in just barely under thirty minutes, good but not great, but still anything under thirty feels like I’m not completely out of shape.

It doesn’t strictly count as a fitness point, but I ordered a pair of wireless waterproof bone conducting headphones. I’m a normal kind of guy, after all, and I like to listen to some tunes while I work out. I tried the whole fruit-based pod thing and they get sweaty and fall out, and I know the new ones have improved—but then I saw the waterproof wrap-around version (no brands mentioned) were on the reward points website and so, I’m like, that seems like an upgrade for my purposes. They are currently on order and I won’t say a done deal, but I expect them in a week or two.

Sunday we met thirty minutes early for our Sunday run because the forecast was for hot, hot, hot by mid-morning—and it wasn’t wrong. We logged an honest eight klicks and tried to keep it to the shade.

I figure that pretty much anything I log with my watch counts as fitness, so having logged a two hour paddle down the river with my wife and dog on Sunday afternoon I can say, yeah, kayaking down a river is a workout. I was tired like crazy that evening.

I was feeling dedicated to my still-young run streak on Monday but the firesmoke had rolled in and we cancelled our traditional breakfast run meetup—in that we still went for breakfast but skipped the run for health reasons.  But I had a run on my mind and a rec centre pass in my wallet so I hit the track and logged a five klicks track run shortly after we washed up from dinner.

Now, summer vacation proper is over, effective as I write this knowing my kid is off to school again, and my days can be a little more focussed on getting back into the fall and winter routine—and that includes some serious ramping up of my training. Stay tuned.