Taking a Break

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I didn’t go to my gym from June through August. My gym was too hot, Kevin (my spouse) had serious injuries, and I was tired. I also took most of June off from running… I only ran 34 miles in the whole month (versus 30+ in a week). Here are the outcomes:

Positives:

  • Somehow managed to keep my running times up and maybe even improve? My most recent half was still under two hours, which I wasn’t expecting, and I had a 10-minute improvement on my recent 10 miler time. Not sure how, but it worked!

  • I got more sleep 😴

  • I got a chance to really reevaluate what I actually want out of my fitness routine. I realized that I want to continue getting stronger overall, but also that my main goal is to also keep getting faster!

Negatives:

  • I lost a significant amount of arm/shoulder strength 😭 I used to be able to do a set of seven pull-ups and now I can only do two to three. Time to gain it back!

  • Somewhere between lots of running and not squatting, I managed to get patellar tendonitis that seems to only affect my squats (BOOO) and not my running (YAY). I’ve definitely got to work toward fixing that and it might be a bit.

Right now, I’m trying to determine what I want my future routine to be. I’m currently running and occasionally going to CrossFit, but my gym has been doing a lot of cardio-heavy workouts recently, which really don’t benefit me. I’m looking at you, burpees! I know I want to keep lifting and definitely improve my arm/shoulder strength, but I haven’t figured out exactly what that will look like yet.