Well. July, for lack of better words, was terrible. But that’s not the point of this blog post, so let’s move along and see how those goals for the year are going.
1-3, and 5: Running-related goals. You can’t really meet lofty goals if you’ve spent the year injured.
4: Do a century bike ride: I had figured this goal was also elusive, but biking no longer hurts my leg so this may actually happen. I did my first 50-mile bike ride in July, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected. (It probably helps that the plan was 40 miles, so I didn’t have the daunting “new longest distance” thing hanging over my head until I missed a turn and decided to go for it.) I’d like to go road bike shopping, but my hybrid works, so I might just save my pennies for now. Thoughts? Here’s my current bike, which is certainly the best bike I’ve ever had so I don’t really know what I’m missing…
6. Bike at least 700 miles: I met this goal on July 19. Hooray, one goal out of 13! I think, since one of my other goals was to run 1,500 miles this year, I’m going to see if I can get to 1,500 biking miles instead. July’s total cycling mileage was 146, putting me at 820.18 miles for the year.
7. Go to the gym at least 150 times this year: Um, yeah. I still have 94 gym trips remaining this year to meet that goal, which would mean 19 times per month. It’s a lot nicer outside…
8. Read at least one book a month: I escaped into two books in July. I really enjoyed “A Fierce Radiance” by Lauren Belfer, and it was a perfect book I could crawl into and temporarily hide from my unpleasant world. Set in WWII, it’s a fictionalized account of the discovery of penicillin, and it involves some romance, some drama and some history. It’s also a good reminder that we live in times where medicine exists to cure us — less than 100 years ago, that wasn’t the case. I also plowed through a John Grisham book I hadn’t read, “The Litigators.” I always like a good Grisham novel or movie, but this one was just meh. The characters were only so-so, and the plot was the same old “underdog lawyer fights to survive” thing.
9. Cook dinner more often: I didn’t do a lot of cooking in July, partly because I didn’t do a lot of eating in July. But I did attempt to make pizza for the first time. Conclusions: Trader Joe’s pre-made pizza dough makes a LOT of pizza, and it’s super sticky so maybe I should try rolling it out with oil instead of flour next time, as a Twitter friend suggested. The dough was kind of thick, but recipe was unique: Taco pizza. Nope, you didn’t misread that.
10. Go to bed at 10 p.m.: I nailed this at least 25 of the 31 days. I discovered that if you can’t eat, your body hibernates. (It also gets really cold, which saved me some air conditioning costs.)
11. Get down to XXX amount of pounds: Related to number 10, by mid-July I was back down to my pre-injury weight, and this was proven both by my own “off by several pounds” scale as well as at the doctor’s office last week. Now to keep those pounds off and shed a bit more weight, and I’ll be at “goal race weight” (whenever I can race again).
12. Blog an average of twice a week: Haha, it’s pretty clear that this won’t happen in 2014. I’m okay with that, because I’d rather have a few posts that get a lot of great public and private feedback (like this one from July) than a bunch of “I wrote this to meet a quota” posts.
13. Find a cheaper place to live: I actually thought I had this figured out, but that plan was pulled out from under me. I need a new plan, but in the meantime I’m thinking of canceling my expensive cable and getting a Netflix membership. However, there goes live TV, including sports. Any thoughts on that, as well?
And, since this post is a bit mundane, here’s a lesson from July: No matter what happens, the sun will keep rising and setting.
