2020 in review.
Hooboy. I kinda just want to skip the 2020 year in review, but I know I'd be disappointed in myself in the future, that I didn't write anything.
I had some big goals this year. The biggest was Rockman in Norway in August. Most other things were to prepare for that goal, and then a few celebratory races afterward.
The year started out normally. Matt and I ran the Bandera 25k, and then Trista, Matt, and I ran out at Spider Mountain.
Then the world fell apart.
We were sent home from work in March, and despite my severe doubts about my ability to do my job from home, it turned out to be very possible, especially when the people I was supporting were also at home. Don't get me wrong, it's a giant pain in the ass to do anything, but we've figured out the right combination of zoom calls and screen sharing and screen taking-overing to make it possible to keep all my people working successfully from home. Mine isn't a job that can be done entirely from home, though, so even though some of my coworkers haven't set foot in the building since March, I've had to go in 1-2 times a month to update , install, or reboot machines that I couldn't do from home.
With no commute time came more time to devote to training, but training for what? SwimRun Lake James was canceled. The Bryce Canyon 50k miraculously wasn't canceled, but should have been, and neither Trista nor I wanted to get on a plane and go mill about with a lot of other potential covid carriers, so we decided to defer to next year. Rockman was canceled, and even if it hadn't been, nobody wanted Americans in their country, and we certainly didn't want to get on an international flight. SwimRun NC was canceled. Ultimately the only race we originally had planned for post-March 2020 that happened was SwimRun Austin, and it's arguable whether it should have happened.
I could have gone either way as far as motivation goes, in the face of all of that, and I'm happy to say that I managed to maintain my motivation. Thanks in large part, over the summer, to the Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee. A 50k, the Yeti and Goggins virtual races, 3 x 13.1 miles, and an unofficial virtual Dopey Challenge meant a lot of miles, all solo, during the summer months.
Once that challenge was over, I let myself back off the running again a bit, and do some recovery. Then I decided to set myself a new challenge, and signed up for the Bandera 100k. It was a stretch, given the time I had left, but it was nice to have a goal.
Except it didn't really work out. The motivation was mostly there, but physically I've just felt really terrible. My running has been slow and uninspired. I still have a gimpy left hamstring, but I don't even notice it anymore because I woke up one morning and my RIGHT hamstring was messed up. Evidently I'm now so old I injure myself in my sleep. So I've been trying to balance solo PT on that and still running but not making it worse.
I ran the Wild Hare 25k and then DNFed the Mosaic Trail Marathon at 17 miles, and realized that the 100k just wasn't feasible. And the 50k really wasn't either. And I didn't have a good feeling about continuing to do events during a pandemic. It's just too easy to forget there's a pandemic and let your guard down, and there's always people passing and being passed. For me it's not worth the risk. So we backed out of Bandera entirely, which ended up being a huge weight off my shoulders.
Coming into 2021, I have no idea what this year will bring. None of us do. I think most events are assuming they will be able to take place, even though covid numbers are absurdly high everywhere right now, and the vaccine is in very early days of being deployed. I have no risk factors and am only moderately elderly, so it'll be quite a while before they call my number.
My event dance card basically looks exactly like last year's, because everything that didn't happen was just deferred to this year. First up is SwimRun Lake James in late April. Will things be "safe" again by then? No way of knowing.
So I will assume that race will happen, which means I need to start swimming again. After SwimRun Austin, I stopped swimming entirely, partly because I only really felt safe swimming at 5am when nobody else was there, and that gets old really fast when it's 30 degrees, and you don't really have a commute, so you have no reason to get out of bed at 4am.
I also need to lose some of the weight I've put on. I know many people have put on pandemic weight, but mine started before the pandemic. I think it's just getting old and having a less vigorous metabolism. Even with all those miles I ran over the summer, I kept putting on or maintaining weight. The effort it will take to lose any weight now is so much more than it was before, and so far I haven't been able to find that line. Hopefully I can do so this year, because I do not fit well in my clothes, which makes me not want to ever leave the house. Which is fine when you work from home and everything is canceled, but will become a bigger concern when/if we go back to work, and I have to cram all this extra me into swimrun costumes again.
Anyway.
2020 totals
Swim: 52h 16m 09s - 152290 Yd
Bike: 47h 20m 58s - 656.03 Mi
Run: 311h 23m 40s - 1736.65 Mi
Stairmaster: 8h 16m 52s
2019 wasn't a ton of swimming, 277472 yards, and I expected and was on course to easily double that. Until pandemic.
Obviously less cycling, without the Europe trip, but barely any cycling at all. 7 of those 47 hours of cycling in 2020 came in the last month and a half, as my body needed a break from so much running.
Running was the true 2020 star of my life. I only ran 825 miles in 2019, and I surpassed that in 2020 in the middle of summer. I had several over 200 mile months, which I'd only done once before in the past, I think. And the 1726 miles I ran was a huge yearly run mileage PR for me, with the previous best being 1590 miles in 2016. So I feel good about that, at least.
In 2020 I read 27 books.
We got a fun new toy we're still trying to figure out completely.
I maintained my duolingo streak for another year, ending the year with a 2109 day streak. Current list is the same as last year, Swedish, Russian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Norwegian, and I have also added Finnish, which is a trip and a challenge.
I saw my family infrequently, but we tried to get together safely when we could.
And I know that every year of mine is the year of the dogs, but this year especially. Matt and I have both been working from home since March 2020, which means we pulled the dogs from their weekly Taurus playdate, and they have been home with us 100%. We haven't eaten in a restaurant since March, which means either I'm cooking or we're picking up curbside from somewhere, and the dogs go with us for that. Not having a commute has given me more time in the mornings to take them for a walk rather than just let them out in the yard. Enzo is getting a little more wobbly as he gets older, which means we aren't comfortable with him taking the stairs down into the yard, so a short evening walk has been added to the schedule, as well. And honestly, we're all incredibly happy with the situation.
One of the worst times of the pandemic for us was this little guy getting really sick. The kind of sick where they don't know if he's gonna come back home. Blood clotting problem which kept him in the emergency hospital for a week (where we couldn't see him, because pandemic). Fortunately he recovered and has come back as good or even better than before. Our little trooper.
Our one trip this year was a week-long closecation at a wonderful little house on the river in Canyon Lake.
The 4 of us are pretty much never apart, but we're all getting along famously, and I'm not sure how we're ever going to go back to the "real world". Or whatever the world was before the pandemic. Or whether we'll even ever get back there. I guess we'll figure that out as we go along.
Here's to.. whatever 2021 brings.
I had some big goals this year. The biggest was Rockman in Norway in August. Most other things were to prepare for that goal, and then a few celebratory races afterward.
The year started out normally. Matt and I ran the Bandera 25k, and then Trista, Matt, and I ran out at Spider Mountain.
Then the world fell apart.
We were sent home from work in March, and despite my severe doubts about my ability to do my job from home, it turned out to be very possible, especially when the people I was supporting were also at home. Don't get me wrong, it's a giant pain in the ass to do anything, but we've figured out the right combination of zoom calls and screen sharing and screen taking-overing to make it possible to keep all my people working successfully from home. Mine isn't a job that can be done entirely from home, though, so even though some of my coworkers haven't set foot in the building since March, I've had to go in 1-2 times a month to update , install, or reboot machines that I couldn't do from home.
With no commute time came more time to devote to training, but training for what? SwimRun Lake James was canceled. The Bryce Canyon 50k miraculously wasn't canceled, but should have been, and neither Trista nor I wanted to get on a plane and go mill about with a lot of other potential covid carriers, so we decided to defer to next year. Rockman was canceled, and even if it hadn't been, nobody wanted Americans in their country, and we certainly didn't want to get on an international flight. SwimRun NC was canceled. Ultimately the only race we originally had planned for post-March 2020 that happened was SwimRun Austin, and it's arguable whether it should have happened.
I could have gone either way as far as motivation goes, in the face of all of that, and I'm happy to say that I managed to maintain my motivation. Thanks in large part, over the summer, to the Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee. A 50k, the Yeti and Goggins virtual races, 3 x 13.1 miles, and an unofficial virtual Dopey Challenge meant a lot of miles, all solo, during the summer months.
Once that challenge was over, I let myself back off the running again a bit, and do some recovery. Then I decided to set myself a new challenge, and signed up for the Bandera 100k. It was a stretch, given the time I had left, but it was nice to have a goal.
Except it didn't really work out. The motivation was mostly there, but physically I've just felt really terrible. My running has been slow and uninspired. I still have a gimpy left hamstring, but I don't even notice it anymore because I woke up one morning and my RIGHT hamstring was messed up. Evidently I'm now so old I injure myself in my sleep. So I've been trying to balance solo PT on that and still running but not making it worse.
I ran the Wild Hare 25k and then DNFed the Mosaic Trail Marathon at 17 miles, and realized that the 100k just wasn't feasible. And the 50k really wasn't either. And I didn't have a good feeling about continuing to do events during a pandemic. It's just too easy to forget there's a pandemic and let your guard down, and there's always people passing and being passed. For me it's not worth the risk. So we backed out of Bandera entirely, which ended up being a huge weight off my shoulders.
Coming into 2021, I have no idea what this year will bring. None of us do. I think most events are assuming they will be able to take place, even though covid numbers are absurdly high everywhere right now, and the vaccine is in very early days of being deployed. I have no risk factors and am only moderately elderly, so it'll be quite a while before they call my number.
My event dance card basically looks exactly like last year's, because everything that didn't happen was just deferred to this year. First up is SwimRun Lake James in late April. Will things be "safe" again by then? No way of knowing.
So I will assume that race will happen, which means I need to start swimming again. After SwimRun Austin, I stopped swimming entirely, partly because I only really felt safe swimming at 5am when nobody else was there, and that gets old really fast when it's 30 degrees, and you don't really have a commute, so you have no reason to get out of bed at 4am.
I also need to lose some of the weight I've put on. I know many people have put on pandemic weight, but mine started before the pandemic. I think it's just getting old and having a less vigorous metabolism. Even with all those miles I ran over the summer, I kept putting on or maintaining weight. The effort it will take to lose any weight now is so much more than it was before, and so far I haven't been able to find that line. Hopefully I can do so this year, because I do not fit well in my clothes, which makes me not want to ever leave the house. Which is fine when you work from home and everything is canceled, but will become a bigger concern when/if we go back to work, and I have to cram all this extra me into swimrun costumes again.
Anyway.
2020 totals
Swim: 52h 16m 09s - 152290 Yd
Bike: 47h 20m 58s - 656.03 Mi
Run: 311h 23m 40s - 1736.65 Mi
Stairmaster: 8h 16m 52s
2019 wasn't a ton of swimming, 277472 yards, and I expected and was on course to easily double that. Until pandemic.
Obviously less cycling, without the Europe trip, but barely any cycling at all. 7 of those 47 hours of cycling in 2020 came in the last month and a half, as my body needed a break from so much running.
Running was the true 2020 star of my life. I only ran 825 miles in 2019, and I surpassed that in 2020 in the middle of summer. I had several over 200 mile months, which I'd only done once before in the past, I think. And the 1726 miles I ran was a huge yearly run mileage PR for me, with the previous best being 1590 miles in 2016. So I feel good about that, at least.
In 2020 I read 27 books.
We got a fun new toy we're still trying to figure out completely.
I maintained my duolingo streak for another year, ending the year with a 2109 day streak. Current list is the same as last year, Swedish, Russian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Norwegian, and I have also added Finnish, which is a trip and a challenge.
I saw my family infrequently, but we tried to get together safely when we could.
And I know that every year of mine is the year of the dogs, but this year especially. Matt and I have both been working from home since March 2020, which means we pulled the dogs from their weekly Taurus playdate, and they have been home with us 100%. We haven't eaten in a restaurant since March, which means either I'm cooking or we're picking up curbside from somewhere, and the dogs go with us for that. Not having a commute has given me more time in the mornings to take them for a walk rather than just let them out in the yard. Enzo is getting a little more wobbly as he gets older, which means we aren't comfortable with him taking the stairs down into the yard, so a short evening walk has been added to the schedule, as well. And honestly, we're all incredibly happy with the situation.
One of the worst times of the pandemic for us was this little guy getting really sick. The kind of sick where they don't know if he's gonna come back home. Blood clotting problem which kept him in the emergency hospital for a week (where we couldn't see him, because pandemic). Fortunately he recovered and has come back as good or even better than before. Our little trooper.
Our one trip this year was a week-long closecation at a wonderful little house on the river in Canyon Lake.
The 4 of us are pretty much never apart, but we're all getting along famously, and I'm not sure how we're ever going to go back to the "real world". Or whatever the world was before the pandemic. Or whether we'll even ever get back there. I guess we'll figure that out as we go along.
Here's to.. whatever 2021 brings.