How it’s going: March ’23 in review

I’m going to try something new.

My planner has a page at the end of every month that has a collection of reflective questions. They mostly centre around things you achieved in the month, things/people you are grateful for and the baby steps you took towards your higher goals. To be honest I usually skip over it, but yesterday I actually read the questions and they were hard!

I like to think of myself as someone who pays attention. I journal and have a planner and log my everything on Strava or Instagram or Sheets or MacroFactor or Natural Cycles. You name it and I’m probably tracking it in some way shape or form.

I can tell you how many kilometres I’ve run, my average weight, how much I spent to the cent at the supermarket or on coffees at work but you ask me the “most memorable” part of the month or what I accomplished and I’m completely lost, the entire month and frankly the ones preceding it all blur into one.

What did I even do this month? What did I do yesterday?

I’m not going to lie, I had to go back to the monthly planner, through the photos app on my phone and have a look at Strava to remember what I did this month. I hope that at the end of next month, I’m a bit more conscious and aware of the four weeks that had just flown by. It feels a bit sad and almost ungrateful to not know how I spent my time.

March started out in a bit of a tizz with coming back from New Zealand right before going back to work. I remember feeling stressed and rushed and noting that next time I travel I’ll leave myself more time to decompress before going back to work.

I started physio and osteo with my usual trepidation. I’m haunted by my previous experience with prolonged misdiagnosis and I’m not always the most trusting of the experts or my own body. I’m grateful for their patience as I was clearly not very trusting and googled everything they said as soon as I got in the car.

They even entertained my neuroses when I sent a quite rude email requesting an MRI because what they were doing clearly wasn’t working!

But I followed their instructions and now at the end of the month, the pain has gone and I feel like the imbalances I had at the start of the month have improved significantly.

I once again had to relearn the lesson that strength training is just as important as run training and I’m back on the baby weights.

Nothing to major or that anyone on Instagram or tik tok would be impressed by but starting slow with easy-ish weight and one session per week. My mobility is improving too, trying to remember to do the activation exercises before I go running. It just makes my dog even more impatient.

Running wise, I think the thing that was the most memorable and that I’m the most grateful for was Warby Trail Fest. It was great to run with mates and to see them achieve their goals. The course and volunteers were great but it was really about the chats and snacks.

It’s easy to forget how grateful you are for the daily run with the pups. Even when freddo is super slow and stops to “pee” on every single blade of grass or weed or when Charlie wants to go super fast and I can’t keep up. They just love it and it truly is usually the best part of my day. I’m sure theirs is dinner time though!

I’ve slowly been building back up and I’m almost back to my pre Ultra Trail Kosciusko and Tarawera mileage. I’ve been thoughtful and consistent and not worried too much about what days I’m having rest days and going with the flo.

I miss not having a coach though. I like the accountability and not having to think about what run I was going to do that day. I haven’t signed up with a new coach for a few reasons, firstly the prices are kinda insane and I just can’t justify it and I also don’t really know where to start in who to reach out to. It’s kinda hard. I don’t want and pre prepared program and no conversation or connection but I also don’t want to pay an absolute fortune for a program with a zoom call once a month. Maybe if interest rates go back down a bit, I’ll re-assess. In the mean time, I’m putting together everything I know and trying to train myself.

I’ve committed to one “workout”, one “long run”, one “strength session” and “one trail run” per week.

Once I’m back in the swing with strength I’ll add another one but I don’t want to over commit and not do any!

I’m sourcing my workouts from similar things I’ve done when training with coaches and loading them on my Garmin watch because I suck at pacing myself.

My watch is having a hard time connecting to satellites so I’m going back and forth with Garmin support so fingers crossed it resolves itself because its increasingly frustrating and I don’t really want to buy another one!