This week was a great week for workouts! I had a lot of fun by incorporating some hiking and biking along with my runs. One thing I noticed this week, though, was that when I am working from home, a three-mile run is just not enough activity to get me to my 10,000 daily steps goal. If I were to teach on campus and then run, I would exceed that goal easily. Hanging out on the couch with my laptop? Not so much. So even though I covered more miles in my workouts this week, I got fewer steps than last week.

Monday: 2.75-mile “hike” (fine, walk) through the forest preserve with Becky. It is lovely to get out there in the woods and get moving. We tried to keep the pace a bit vigorous, but also got to talking, so I don’t think we were moving terribly fast. That’s fine by me. [Steps: 8,587]

Tuesday: 3-mile run. I’m up to running 3 miles at a time in the Newtons this week, which means on short runs like this one, I no longer have to go home for a wardrobe change in the middle of the run. Quite the relief! I don’t have to stay so close to my house any more, so I took a different route around town. It is HOT out these days. [Steps: 11,009]

Wednesday: 20-mile bike ride, discussed here. Loved it. Looking to do another one this coming week. [Steps: 4,452]

Thursday: 3-mile run. I tried to treat this as more of a tempo run and wanted to hit paces in the low 9s, but my average was about 9:35 or something. Running that uphill finish toward my street corner is always rough, but especially so when trying to run fast in hot, humid, Alabama-summer weather. OOF. Also, this run was the last known appearance of my orange sunglasses. Where are you? Come back to meeeee. [Steps: 8,874]

Friday: Rest day. [Steps: 2,333. Forgot my fitbit for most of the day, but I wasn’t very active anyway.]

Saturday: 5-mile run. Longest run since before my last round of PT, so I am pretty thrilled about this! I ran the first two miles in my old Brooks and then finished with three miles in my Newtons. I am looking forward pretty eagerly to the time when I can run 5-6 miles in the same pair of shoes, as I’ll finally be able to venture farther out from the same neighborhood streets. [Steps: 13,524]

Sunday: 2-mile walk/run + PT. I would really like to be able to run 4x per week consistently. This is something I’ve never done for any real length of time — just tried it every now and then. I have tended to get injured easily in the past, which is the main reason I’ve mostly stuck to running only 3x per week. However, I think that with a good PT protocol in place, if I stay consistent with my exercises and try to listen to my body, I can try for that fourth run each week. I am starting small: this run was really a half-mile warmup walk, one-mile easy run, and half-mile cooldown walk. Next week, I may add a mile. PT consisted of clam shells, single-leg bridges, supermans, squats, duck-walks, and M.C. Hammers. [Steps: 7,515]

Totals: 56,294 Steps

Goals: Next week I need to do two PT sessions, even though I won’t feel like it. I can’t slack on that any more. I’d also like to do another bike ride, 3 regular runs, and hopefully a fourth short/easy run. I’d also like to try working some more steps into my days. This might happen on campus some days, but on the days I work from home, I’ll need to try to get up more often.