June is here already? Wow!  May has been a crazy month!! I wouldn’t ever choose to have a major life transition, like buying and selling a house at the end of the school year again!  In May we traveled to Ohio for my brother’s graduation, then I flew back (almost getting stuck at the airport) to MN so I could finish packing the house while the family stayed in Indiana.  Then on the 15th we sold our house and drove directly to close on purchasing our house. Then we drove to our new home and started unloading!! Within 10 days we had all the boxes into our house and hosted a Memorial Day/Housewarming/House 100 Year Old Party!! Not to mention the super stress of the end of the school year! Then end of the month mellowed a little bit as we slowly start settling in.  We didn’t have to do anything major to our new house, but we’ve gotten stuck on some of the littler things and finding the time to plan and complete them!

One amazing benefit of our new house is the proximity to Theodore Wirth Park and its mixture of single track, wide trails, and pavement.  I’ve already done a handful of runs and have really enjoyed it.  One night I took the kids for a run and stopped at the playground at Wirth Beach for awhile before running home!  Now I just need to figure out distances and loops that I can run from my house! I’ve already got a 5k and 5 mile so that is a good start! Not to mention being able to both bike and drive along the gorgeous Wirth and Memorial Parkways!

I did a lot of box and furniture lifting in May! Some of it felt intense, but not quite WOD intensity! There is no easy way to quantify all the moving.  On two of our biggest moving days I did Crossfit in the morning and box loading in the evening.  The next day it was hard to say what made me sore!!

The stats are currently in a bit of a mess as I haven’t been updating them consistently with all of the transitions! I love using Running Ahead, but there isn’t a good mobile app for it yet.  I also know that May wasn’t a great month for reaching my goals.  I should have realized that at the beginning of the month and modified them.

My May Goal was to do Yoga every day.  I only did yoga 13 days in the month.  The days I actually did a full routine actually felt really good! I need more yoga in my life!  I did do better on mobility completing 27 days, this often just one or two simple things and again not a full mobility routine that my body would benefit from!

Sometime at the end of April I started an 8 week Wellness Challenge for work and I’ve been completing my daily check-ins.  They are walk 10,000 steps, reduce stress, and sleep 8 hours.  I’ve been getting the steps in pretty consistently (based on my Galaxy S6 data) but obviously not so much on the stress end of things or with the sleep.  I think I’ve hit 8 hours once in the 5 weeks, but I usually wake up on my own before my alarm even goes off which makes me think that it is ok.

Crossfit – I was able to go 5 of the 13 times I would normally attend.  This works out to be every time that I could go based on our schedules.  Christy worked a week of weekdays so we could travel home and then flying and closing messed up a couple of more times.  I need to get better at doing some type of body weight WOD at home.

Running – 29.1  miles – I’ve been running fairly consistently on Saturday mornings with the Team World Vision crew.  This is the bulk of my mileage. Last week’s run had to be aborted due to a flat tire! With summer coming and living near Wirth I’m hoping to increase my mileage!

Biking – 31.9 miles – What a drastic change from last month! With the moving and weird schedules I had to do more daycare drop-off than normal so that cut into some of my bike commuting.  My new commute isn’t actually too much shorter, but overall a more scenic ride – no more semis and downtown traffic! The entire ride is still almost exclusively on bike infrastructure.

Dating – I don’t recall going on any kid-less dates this month.  Oops!  Does going to closing count as a date? Maybe the most expensive date ever!!

June will be a less stressful month as I’ll be winding down with work.  I’m actually going to a lot of training in June, which won’t be ideal.  However sitting in a training is probably less-stressful than regular work.  We shall see.  My June goals are to watch a TED talk and do push-ups every day. I’ll probably just end up watching 30 TED talks catching a few on the weekends and I’m going to say at least 10 push-ups is the minimum that will count.

April was quite a busy/weird month.  At the end of March we decided to sell our house and buy a new one! So we began April frantically cleaning and getting our house staged for selling while also looking at new houses.  In less than 2 weeks of signing a contract with a real estate agent we had a purchase agreement for both a new house and selling our current house!  The rest of April was a blur of purging, packing, cleaning, and trying to maintain some regular life! We were fortunate that Christy’s parents had already planned to come up over spring break so they were able to watch the kids while we looked at houses and stage ours.  My Mom was already planning to come up to watch the kid’s for me to ride the Dickie’s Scramble so she also helped with a ton of packing and starting to load our moving pod. We really couldn’t have done it without their help!

This whole process obviously added some stress to our life and preempted some others plans.

My main goal for April was #30daysofbiking  I thought that since I finally wasn’t travelling in April that I’d do a lot better.  Eh.. Incorrect! I only rode 22 of the days.  I’ll blame some of the moving stress! I actually did a good job riding for the first 8 days, missed one and rode a bunch more. I wasn’t able to sneak away while my Mom was here the first part and then once I rode the Dickie Scramble I was pretty shot for the next few days!  My total monthly mileage was huge!  In one month I tripled my yearly total! I had mentioned that I was going to try and wear bike apparel daily, but I gave up on that one after the first week.  I could have done it, but it was hard to keep track of wearing something different.

Mileage:

Running – 8.5 miles – I was focusing on riding more which meant I rode to work and didn’t feel like running first. I was tempted to ride one way and run home and almost did before I wisely realized my body wasn’t ready for a 9 mile run.

Biking – 230 miles – Riding an 85 mile race and a 33 mile training ride while also a month of trying to ride every day meant I really ramped up my mileage, which could be why I’m dragging a bit now!

Swim – 200 meters – I wanted to see what it felt like to swim since I haven’t really done it in 2 years.  I was briefly tempted to do a triathlon with my old work buddies.  I could probably do it, but given the stress of moving it didn’t seem wise to try and force myself to hit the pool on a regular basis.

Crossfit – I went 5 times.  It was a little frustrating that the week that I can go all 3 times was also the week before my race, so I didn’t go as part of the taper.  I’m still enjoying it and feeling stronger.

Mobility – I did 24 times which has been a fairly consistent number.  Maybe not so consistent on what that actually means.  On days when  I do Crossfit, I spend some time after using the mobility tools they have. At home it is less consistent.

Dating my Wife – We did go on two dates this month!! Yay!! Having family in town 2x’s this month meant we didn’t even have to pay for a babysitter!

My Goal for May is to do Yoga every day. I’ve downloaded a couple of yoga apps for my phone to help me with poses and some sort of program.  We shall see!

How was your April did you get out and do #30daysofbiking ?

Wow, April came in with a blast here in Minnesota. And not an arctic one! No joke, April started with an 84 degree day followed by thunderstorms. But lets look back at March. The last few weeks have all kind of been a blur though the last week welcomed Spring Break and a nice change of pace.

The goals for March were:
Declutter – what can be thrown away, given away, or put away somewhere else. An item a day or 31 items. This was quite successful. I’ve thrown out or boxed up for Goodwill more than 31 items. This started mostly as clothing items but then I started cleaning up other areas.  Let’s just say that the trash can and recycling bin were full and we made a trip to Goodwill.

Ride the Bike Outside – pretty self-explanatory.  I did manage to get outside 3 times on my bike this month. I think twice to the gym and once to work.  The warmer than normal spring sure helped with that!  I did some other riding on my trainer and at spin class so I’ve been doing some riding, but not enough for the Dickie’s Scramble.

Here are some statistics from this month:

Running – 27.4 miles! My largest month since like November!

Biking – 45 miles (spin classes were estimated guesses)

Crossfit – I went 9 times!!

Mobility – 24 times

We only went on 1 kid-less date again and it was with friends to see Selma (powerful movie).  Since it was the end of the quarter I needed to be at tab and inbox zero.  I made great progress but didn’t succeed! I got some help by having computer problems that essentially lost a zillion tabs I had open, but I still couldn’t get it done.  So at the end of next quarter all the e-mails from this past quarter need to be gone.

I only have one goal for April – 30 Days of Biking!! #30daysofbiking  I did decide that I’m going to try and wear some type of bike apparel every day for the month and Instagram it too!

How was your March?

Here we go into March! February was a little bit of a rough month.  Extreme cold days and illness.  The two goals for February were to Read a Poem Every Day and to Write 4 Poems.

I read way more than 28 poems! In the process of reading poems I also made some work towards another goal of finishing books that I started.  I finished reading through The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou.  It was hard to read only one of her poems at a time so I’d read 3 or 4 at a go. I purchased the book last year after she passed away so was glad to finally get around to finishing it. Over the last few days I just searched for poems to read to finish out the month.

I did write 4 poems! I might share them at a later date! We shall see… They were all pretty short (one is actually a haiku!) but were a good foray back into the mindset of writing poems like in high school.  Although in high school there was no website to double check my syllable count!

I continue to make progress on other goals as well:

– I’m still way off last year’s running mileage for the month (33 in 2014 and 14 in 2015).  I don’t remember why I didn’t run the first week of the month, was it too cold or too stressed at work? And then I got a sinus infection towards the end of the month.

–  After talking about planning a spring bike race I finally got around to getting the trainer setup and have used it 4 times this month.  My bike computer needed batteries so I didn’t get mileage for the first few rides, but in the mileage count for the month I estimated (on the conservative side) that I rode 44 miles.  Last year I rode 5 times on the trainer. I also hit a spin class at the YMCA which was a pretty good workout.

– The aforementioned sinus infection hit me on the week that I could have done Crossfit three times  so I only got it once which really hurt my ability to go.  I’ve been trying to make up some of the missed weight lifting workouts on the weekend at the YMCA,  but it isn’t the same.  5/9 times again in February.

– I did mobility 21 days, which is a high percentage than in January.

– Christy and I disagree on the number of kidless dates that we had.  I think we did 2, but neither of us can remember what the other date was.  We went to the new Surly Tap Room and it was excellent food and excellent beer!

My plan for March is to declutter my spaces.. what can be thrown away, given away, or put away somewhere else. An item a day or 31 items.  A Facebook friend posted that for Lent they are getting rid of a bag of stuff a day! That is a lot of stuff.  Similar to last year and with “decluttering the digital” life this can be hard to stop once you get into the flow of it.  We’ve already given a few bags of stuff to Goodwill this year from our kitchen.

I also hope to get outside and ride the bike some.  That is very dependent on the weather, but hopefully it will start to warm up.  Even though March is the snowiest month of the year it also tends to dry up quickly.  Though this winter no one really knows!

Since March is also the last month of the quarter I need to be working on getting to Inbox and Tab Zero!! Yikes 🙂

Yea, a week late, but whose keeping track?

I was 50/50 on the two main goals for the month:

I decluttered my digital life by more than 30 unfollow, unfriend tasks.  Once you get started it is easy to just keep unsubscribing! Most days it felt good, some days it was more of a stretch to find something to get ride of.  A few times I did just change my subscription preferences to reduce the clutter.  Most of my e-mail is filtered around into various labels (thanks Gmail) so my Inbox stays relatively clutter-free but the time and mental energy taken to process the others is still wasted if I don’t need it anymore.  So it felt good!

I struggled with the 30 Day/5 Minute Plank Challenge.  I did a great job of doing them until I needed to hold the plank for 75 seconds.  I just couldn’t get past a minute.  My body would start shaking 10 seconds in and just shake the whole time.  By about 50 seconds my back would start to hurt and bam, I couldn’t do it. I took a few days off and then ended up just doing a bunch of 1 minute planks.  I ended up doing or attempting the workout on 24/31 days.  Some of those 24 were also scheduled off days!  I plan to revisit this in November, so hopefully that will work better!

I did make progress on other goals!

– We went out on two kidless dates!!

– I read all 31 days of the Bible Reading Plan

– I did Crossfit 5/9 planned times, I was sick at the beginning of the month.

– I only ran 10.4 miles, which puts me behind the “schedule” and is way off the 40 I did last January.  It was cold, I was sick, and the schedule has some kinks! The weird snow-less weather has meant that I haven’t been able to do any snowshoeing either.

– I did get to ride my bike outside which was fantastic! On an almost 50 degree random day I snuck out and did the Cedar Lake loop for 11.5 miles.  I biked more last January too, but didn’t get outside at all!  This also puts me behind the curve, but that’s to be expected!

– I’ve been doing mobility.  Some days I squeeze it in right before bed, others I plan on squeezing it in and then forget. And some days its just a quick roll with the foam roller. I did it 21/31 days.  I need to work on some of the quality of it…

February is short and sweet!

– Read a poem a day,

– Write some poems!

(sneak peak –  so far I’m on track and I’m also knocking off another goal of finishing books I’ve already started)