Aug 6 to Aug 17

 

Artist's rendition

It has been a minute - I've been enjoying my time to myself. Most of it anyway. Dealing with people who are under the weather at my house these days is a drag - I'd rather be out touring the countryside but I gotta be a nurse.

Shrug. It's part of the wedding vows I made a few years ago, so it gets done. 

I bought a second-hand kayak but have yet to be in it, thanks to a series of rain and thunderstorms. I'm hoping today will be the day I get out there on it. 

I hit every morning session - usually about a half hour of stretching and mobility. It's really been helpful and I really do want to learn a lot more about it. I've been missing swims in the evening, thanks to some new ink I got. Meh, again I think today is the day I go back to swimming. At least any rotator cuff problems have been able to recover. 

...and hiking. I've done a few hiking trips. I'm starting out low distance, but getting about a 25-30 minute session done before the heat or the bugs drive me into the adventure van.

July 5 to Aug 5

 

A throwback to a long time ago

Sorry to my loyal readers - this has been a rather odd month. I finished my side hustle gig the last week of July. It was kind of cool to be able to work full-time from the back of an RV. I did have some recommendations for 2025, but I left them in the journal I finished and they are not handy at this time to share.

Suffice it to say I did not train very much, which disappointed me. Just too many bugs and a forgotten tent that might have worked had I had it present. We got back to civilization on or about the 15th of the month and I was able to get back into the yoga in the mornings, teach, eat a decent meal /get out of the house, mark, teach, nap then swim before working/prepping and then bed on time routine. 

Honestly, getting to bed early and taking up early saved July for me, as it got me to focus on the work at hand. Keeping a journal helped me keep ideas from overwhelming my mind and served as a place to brain dump constantly. 

I am setting goals for 2024-25 at the moment as it is very close to my new years eve. AMong those goals is an increase of basic fitness, mobility and living pain free as much as possible. Swimming is helping as is Yoga - I'd like to think about ASL and getting some sort of Lifeguarding certification as well. We will see what I can get done about that. 

As for fitness, it was the usual:

Morning sessions were about a half hour of

Mobility for the hips and spine opening stretches

Abdominal and hip work including leg kicks, ab crunches, v-sits and the like. Ab wheel rollouts and prone shoulder lifts finish this section off

Then shoulder and upper body band work - bicep curls, shoulder presses with bands, banded lat pulls and shoulder pulls are all here. I even get some bodyweight squats done. 

A nice half-hour of mobility and a bit of strength training. 

The evening is 30-minute swims, lengths of front crawl and breaststroke. In the middle is enough walking ... or should I say sometimes enough walking to get to about 4 kilometres of steps in. 

I really do want to get back to running/jogging/getting onto an elliptical trainer this winter.  And Wrestling. I miss that. And rugby ... sigh.