March review

For March, I set the following goals. Again, most were a slight increase in difficulty from February:

Completed

• Running: Run at least 1 mile every day.
• Push-ups: Every other day, 3 sets of 7 chest dips (2:00 rest). Changed on 03/28 to 3x8 dumbbell chest press (50 lbs. each) (2:00 rest).
• Plank: Every other day, a 47s plank. Increased on 03/26 to 50s.
• Pull-ups: Every other day, 3 sets of 3 pull-ups (2:00 rest).
• Squats: Every other day, 1 set of dumbbell squats. 9 reps at 2x35 lbs. Increased on 03/16 to 2x40 lbs.

Incomplete

• Guitar: Every day, 30 minutes of guitar practice. Missed the last day. I felt I was not getting much out of this and this was becoming a chore. For April, I’ll try structuring this better.
• Write a blog post: Every day. I have lots of ideas, but setting this as a goal didn’t really change how frequently I put those ideas to paper. Need a different approach.
• Publish a blog post: Once every 3 days. Similar to the previous point.

Overall thoughts

Unlike February, I couldn’t push myself too much beyond what the goal demanded. For a few, couple of weeks in, I could up the difficulty slightly. I think this shows the goals are set appropriately.

Mentally, this month was quite a struggle, with goals being left for late in the day and sleep being affected. Sleep seems to be the primary governing factor on how the day goes, with coffee a close second.

A little disappointed with missing the guitar goal, but all things considered it’s still going well. entally

Goal-specific comments

Running: The apartment threw a spanner in the works (or threw tiny little stones into my running shoes, if you prefer) when they announced the gym would be closing for an unspecified amount of time. Luckily, public parks in the US are well equipped, and I remembered that a nearby park had parallel bars that I could do dips on. So, for around a week, I switched my runs to outdoor runs and did dips on the public bars. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the outdoor runs, and happy that I pushed through on a day where it rained enough that only the most determined were out. The indoor runs were much easier following this period of outdoor running, so I’m beginning to think even with an incline, a treadmill doesn’t emulate the outdoors well. I also realized - after experimenting with different times - that running around 5-7 PM usually gets me sleepy by midnight. Running seems to provide an energy boost for ~2-3 hours, no matter how tired I am when I start running, so running around 10 PM or so means my mind and body are wide awake even at 1 AM. Lastly, I was quite happy to see that my average mileage has been increasing month-over-month, as has my speed and total run duration. This was a pleasant surprise as I wasn’t aiming for this, rather just going with the flow and how my body felt on a particular day when dieciding how far to push myself.
Push-ups: None.
Plank: This is harder if done immediately after a run.
Pull-ups: None.
Squats: A barbell would let me do more, but going light on this works well with the heavy running load.
Guitar: Need more structure on this. Tried a few ear training exercises, including chord identification, and with practice I realize I’m better than I thought I was at identifying basic chords (major/minor and even aug/dim in some cases). Learned a few more songs, but maybe I need to work on perfecting the ones I have already “learned”.

Goal-setting assessment

Going to skip this section from now on, whenever I don’t have much to say (wish we did this with more “design”/“planning” documents).

Onwards to April!