End of month summary

This all seems trivial after watching the life-and-death drama going on in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but ... well, one of the important reasons I work out is to better prepare my body to handle emergencies. So there's a link.

I had an *outstanding* workout this morning - 3 miles on the treadmill and 2100 meters in the pool, and it all felt relaxed and easy (except for the complaining my arthritic ankle did for the first mile on the treadmill, then thankfully it shut up). It feels so virtuous to be stepping on the treadmill at 6AM, and to be all done with the workout and showered up by 8:30AM. :-)

I probably won't do much tomorrow on the last day of the month, maybe a half an hour on the bike trainer and some crunches. So it's time to look at my totals for the month again, and contrast them with the goals I set at the beginning of the month.

1. Swim 3520 yards (2 miles) just for practice: Swam 9078 yards (5.1 miles). Blew that goal absolutely out of the water. 257% of goal. A+.
2. Cycle 80 miles: rode 119 miles. 148% of goal. A+.
3. Run 80 miles: ran/walked 77 miles. 96% of goal. A.
4. Other training, complete 1000 crunches: 1100 crunches. 110% of goal. A+.
5. Events, complete 1 ten mile road race: Did that, at a pace over 1 minute per mile better than my last 3 runs in the same race. I'll call that an A, just because I'd still like to have a faster finishing time than I actually did.

August grade: A+!!!

The goals that I set were fairly modest, which was important after a few months of not hitting my goals. The bottom line is that I did a great job of meeting my goals for August, my consistency was excellent, I did some very solid cross-training, and I just need to set somewhat more demanding mileage/yardage goals for September. I'll give that a day or two of thought.

Three new things that have helped me train this month:

1. Slightly milder weather than July, for the most part.
2. Setting out my weekly workout plans and accomplishments in the right-hand column on this blog. Making it public keeps me accountable.
3. The advice, encouragement, and wisdom of my friend Simon Hayes, aka "Yurtie", a TRI-DRS member in Australia who, when I was dithering about the Ironman Florida decision, stepped forward and volunteered to coach me online and set up workout plans for the last six weeks and the weeks leading up to the IMFL decision date. Yurtie just plain rocks. He's been a great help in showing me the way to prove it to myself (or not) whether I can do the training it will take to finish an ironman triathlon next year. This month's results certainly make it look much more promising than it did one short month ago. Thank you, Yurtie, and good luck in the Sydney Marathon on September 11!