October seemed to have flown by.  We were fortunate for a little mid-month break.  My in-laws came up for fall break and we were able to get away for a few days to the Florida Keys without any kids! It was marvelous and a much needed break from real life! We stayed at a great hotel, Southernmost Hotel of the USA, and had a great adventure on the water with Fury!  We snorkeled, jet-skiied, para-sailed, and climbed on huge inflatables!

It was a grand time!

October’s Challenge was to do 10 pushups and situps each day. I’m proud to report that this occurred 29/31 times. The two times that I didn’t do it were mostly on accident.  I’d tell myself, I’ll do it after I do this and then forgot.  So not too shabby.  It was hard to want to do it on some days where we had just done some crazy upper body stuff or the one day we did a lot of situps. But it felt good to do them.

I ran a whopping 10.2 miles this month! That is better than September at least!! Ugh. My plan is Crossfit on M,W,F and Bike commute on Tues with a run on Thursday.  I was able to get out for a run on a Saturday morning and for a run in Key West which increased my running total!  Biking to work has been going well.  It still take some time and thought into getting ready and out the door with everything.  I biked for a total of 130 miles for the month.  That was helped by a 25 mile ride I did while pulling the kids on a Saturday.

Crossfit is going well.  I did the first part of the Diane Challenge and did the beginner portion of the  12 week Magnussen Progression maxing out at 245 for the deadlift.  So now I’ll jump into the Intermediate Progression which has been kicking people’s butts.   It will be a good challenge!

My 30 Day Challenge for November is:

Give Thanks – Send in the mail a note of Thanksgiving each day.  A little Cheesy maybe, but we need to spend more time being thankful.

I also decided that I liked doing the pushups, so I’m going to do 10 squats each day.  My thought is to make them slow and rest at the bottom for a second or so.  This will help insure better form.  I’m also going to do some mobility work each day inspired by the book Ready to Run.

How was your October?

I had written this post and then it got lost in the vast world of frustrating space!

July’s challenge was to spend 15 minutes outside each day.  I’m pretty sure that I managed to do that.  There is only one day that I remember thinking back that I wasn’t sure if I did or not.  But I’m pretty sure I made up for it on others days, especially the last 2 which were almost entirely outside! A lot of my outdoor time was work related; recess, bike club, and bus duty. Another significant chunk was working out via bike commuting, running, and biking.  The rest of the time was playing with the kiddos and trying to find some quiet space on the front porch or in the backyard!

Mileage totals aren’t that exciting:

Running – 36.1 miles – some of this is taper, but realistically our schedule makes it hard to run any distance consistently.

Biking – 213.6 miles – a lot bike rides for work.

Crossfit – 12 out of 13 possible workout days based on a 3x’s a week schedule.

I’m not really sure what to do about getting my running mileage up. Obviously, I could cut out Crossfit, but I need the weight training and it is easy to make up at home if I can’t go to the box.  Getting a treadmill is probably the only workable solution but that’s expensive and doesn’t sound like fun at all!  At least it has been consistent throughout the year!

My August challenge is

Take a Picture a Day – I’ve done photo challenges in the past, mostly trying to take a picture a day for a year and while that created some cool pictures, I also got some fairly lame ones.  Do it for a month and be creative.  Avoid the weird 30 day challenges that show up on Facebook!

As you can already note, I’m doing good so far!

I can’t think of any specific additional goals for August.  The school year will be starting up soon so that will be a big transition getting back into the swing of work and the routine for the next 9 months.  I’d like to hit 100 miles again during Powderhorn 24, but I’m not going to put a ton of pressure on myself for that.  By the end of the month I should establish 3-5 goals for my school (work) year.

What are your goals for August?

The month switched over with some thunderstorms!!  May was a busy month as I spent the first few days in Spain, did a 100 mile bike ride, and backpacked on the Superior Hiking Trail.  I also did some work and hung out with my family!!

The May 30 Day Challenge was to read a poem a day. I’m not 100% sure that I actually read one poem a day, but I did read at least 30 poems.  I downloaded the  Poetry app from the Poetry Foundation which “turns your device into a mobile poetry library.”  It has a spinning feature that lets you pick a poem based on a random theme.  I did fairly good reading from it almost daily –  I wish it had a reminder system.  But upon the death of Maya Angelou I decided to purchase a collection of her poems for my Kindle and read 10-15 of them.  This easily put me over 30 for the month.

I didn’t do a really good job of recording all of my mileage and it was a little challenging to always remember which way I did my commute.  But my May stats are:

Running – 20 miles

Biking – 273 miles

Both of these are quite a bit lower than April.   The running one is particularly embarrassing! I want to keep my biking mileage up while also getting into the training plan for my August 2 half marathon.   Training officially started last week, oops!

June’s 30 Day Challenge is to blog every day.  This is going to be  a hard challenge as I’ve struggled to blog once a week!  There are a bunch of blogging prompts out there in the 30 day format, but no one seems perfect for me.  I think I’ll just pull a few from them and maybe I’ll answer a few of the Question of the Day’s that I use for kids at school.

Additionally, I need to buckle down and do some core work.  I noticed it while backpacking.  I really need to hit it or I’m going to get hurt again.  So I’ll blog every day, try core every other day, and start following the training plan!