I become “fully vaccinated” against Covid-19, join a gym, start swimming, and run a bunch of miles.

Monthly totals:

Miles run: 241.6 miles (17.6 fewer miles than March)

Weekly average: 56.37 miles

Days run: 29 out of 30 (I broke my 266 day run streak on April 23.  More on this in Monthly thoughts, but this was on purpose and to take focus off of maintaining a streak and put focus back on why I choose to run most days.)

Calories burned during run: 34,500 kcal (that’s 9.86 lb if 3500 kcal = 1 lb)

Run time: 47 hr 45 min (95.5 min per day average)

Monthly averages and superlatives:

Average speed per mile: 11:50 per mile (18 sec slower than March)

Average stride rate: 157 steps per minute (4 fewer spm than March)

Average heart rate during run: 133 beats per minute (8 bpm fewer per minute than March)

Longest run: April 22 – 16 miles (Why am I doing 16 mile runs with no marathon on the schedule?  No clue.  I keep doing them though, I’ve already done one in May.)

Shortest run: April 27 – 5 miles. 

Fastest run: April 26 – 9:45/mile, 9.3miles (tempo run)

Slowest run (not counting hill runs): April 9 – 13:01/mile. (10 mile long run almost 3 days after 2^nd Covid shot.  I was probably not feeling my best on this run, and my left shoulder was sore the entire run, but fine before and after – probably inflammation of scar tissue due to vaccination.)

Fastest mile: April 19  – Mile 6 at 9:05.

Fastest strides: April 12 – strides: 167 per minute.

Slowest strides (not counting hill repeats):  April 8 and 9 – 154 per minute.

Total ascent: 10,444 ft. (down 1,291 from March)

Non-run monthly stats:

Total distance (running + walking): 306.4 miles (down 17.2 from March) 

Average distance per day: 10.21 miles (down 0.23 from March)

Total steps: 595,200 steps

Average steps per day: 19,840 (up 127 from March) 

Average resting heart rate: 59 bpm (same as February and March)

Lowest resting heart rate: April 13 – 54 bpm (up 1 bpm from lowest in March)

Highest resting heart rate:  April 29 – 65 bpm (same as February and Marh)

Swim stats:

Note: my watch does not count laps well and refuses to count laps with the kickboard.  I either cannot or will not count laps correctly either, so all these distances are “relative”.  Possibly I will either eventually start looking for and find my Speedo lap counting ring that may or may not still exist, or I will break down and buy a new lap counting ring.

Total Swimming Distance: 5.31 miles

Total Laps: 187 (not counting kickboard laps, rough, rough estimate)  for 5 swims this would be 37 laps per swim, sounds close  to what I would expect with 40-45 minute swim times.

Total time swimming:  3 hours 32 minutes

“Speed”: 1.52 miles per hour (kickboard laps not counting is really slowing my swim speed down here)

Strokes per minute: 22

Calories burned while swimming: 2,365.  (My watch doesn’t do heart rate while swimming, so this is a wild stab in the dark by TomTom at calculating calories.  I suspect I’m extremely efficient at swimming and burning far fewer calories than what the watch thinks I am burning.)

Random Throwback to my 2011 Run Log

April monthly thoughts:

1.)  I broke my 266 day run every run streak!  Why would I do this?

I wasn’t feeling pressure to maintain the streak, but I also don’t think it’s entirely healthy for me to keep up that streak “just because”.  It was mentally healthy for me to break the streak, however, physically I think running everyday is great for my body and I love it.

Before breaking the streak, I did some self-analysis.  Why do I run every day?  I love the way it makes me feel.  I’m less tired in the afternoons, and running helps prevent the constant afternoon fatigue due to lingering hypothyroidism symptoms.  So far, it is the best at helping prevent that fatigue, in combination with a lot of caffeine – without running it is incredibly hard to do anything except crash in the afternoon. Running also helps stabilize my energy levels in the afternoon – I feel best when I get more than 7 miles in (I actually feel better after 16 miles than I do after 7, but I can’t run 16 miles every day).

Additionally, running boosts my mood, allows me to meditate/zone out/listen to audiobooks, and overall just feels really good.  Mood boosting is the reason I’ve been running since about 2003 (I started running in 2001), and while I now have additional reasons to run, it stays as one of the most important reasons.

I broke the run streak on April 23rd because I wanted to see if swimming gave my body that same energy boost (see if it prevented my fatigue, I’m never “energetic”, but some days are better than others).  I’ve come to realize that swimming, at least the 45 minutes of swimming I am allotted at a time right now, does not give me more energy in the afternoons, not like running does.  More on swimming, though, in 2.)

2.)  I’ve started swimming laps again.  I went from sometime in 2012 to April 2021 (9 years?!!?) with only swimming laps probably 4-5 times total, when the YMCA held free Thursdays in February (2018 and 2019).  I’ve wanted to return to swimming laps since about 2015, when I moved back to the US from the UK.  I was waiting until I started a job again, and when that didn’t happen, I was in the midst of a major health problem. Swimming became nearly impossible the last couple of years while I was managing hypothyroidism symptoms and a fibroid, making my body and how often and how much I would lose blood difficult to predict.  In July 2020, I was finally healthy and able to swim, and yet, terrified to return to the pool due to the global pandemic.

I made a promise to myself in January 2021, that once I got vaccinated, I would start swimming again.

I became fully vaccinated on April 20^th, 2021.  I joined the YMCA so I could swim on April 23^rd (I tried to join on the 21^st, but found out I could save the joiner’s fee if I waited two days and signed up on Friday).  I am so proud of myself for following through and fulfilling that promise.

What does swimming do for me that running doesn’t?  Why do I need to both swim and run?

Here’s a short history of my relationship with swimming:

We used to go to the pool all summer long when I was a kid in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.  I taught myself to doggy paddle across the shallow end when I was 4-5 years old. I took lots of swim lessons and advanced quickly, and I was on the swim team during the summer when I was about 10-12 years old, and I was pretty good at it.  I love swimming.  I took a long break from swimming from when I was around 13 years old to 20.  During that time, I gained a lot of weight (mostly  when I was 16-20), which was probably my first bout of hypothyroidism symptoms, although I wouldn’t realize that until 18 years later! 

I started swimming again around September of 2000 when I was 20, and lost the weight I had gained (my diet has never been my problem with my weight).  Once I started running in 2001, I still kept swimming laps, although not quite as often.  I joined a pool as soon as I moved to the UK in 2011.  I tried to swim while I was in the UK, but the pools were  more crowded which meant I often had to share lanes with 4 or 5 people, it was harder to get to the pool (I had to take the bus or walk from work), and it was harder for the pools to stay as clean as what I was used to since there were a lot more bodies using them.  So in 2012, I stopped swimming.   Not because I wanted to, but because it was too hard to swim in the UK (for me), and not worth the cost for the few times a year I got my courage up to go.  I never thought this was a permanent decision and thought I’d be swimming again as soon as I moved back to the US in 2015.  It just took much longer than I expected to get back in the water.

So what does it feel like to be swimming once again?  Like a piece of me has been missing all these years.  I feel more complete as a person, and more like my old self.  I was worried my frozen shoulder would prevent me from being able to swim, but so far, it has not been a problem. 

I don’t think I’m a gifted runner.  I love running, I will keep doing it because I enjoy it, but I’m never going to win races or be “fast”.  That’s not why I run, and has never been my motivation, and I’ve never needed to be “fast” to feel like I belong or deserve to be a runner (I feel the same about other runners – people who are judgmental about how fast any other person runs need to do some internal reflection because their value as a person does not change whether they run a 5 minute mile or 18 minute mile).

I do think that I’m a good swimmer, and I feel like swimming comes naturally to me, and I don’t have to think about what I’m doing, it just happens (possibly this is from years of having technique drilled in to me as a small child).  The first day back in the pool on April 23rd, the life guard commented on how nice it is to watch someone who knows how to swim. This was after over 2 years of doing zero laps of anything.  I’m not a fast swimmer (although, I might be faster than I was 9 years ago, it feels like I am), but I am a good swimmer.  Less than a week back in the pool, I’m already back to swimming 25 yards without breathing and swimming butterfly again, two things I would not have predicted would come back to me so quickly.  My body feels at home in the water, swimming.

Running boosts my mood and makes me feel energized. Swimming mellows me out and makes me feel relaxed.  It also makes me feel like myself.  No matter how tired I am or cold the water feels, when I get in the pool and push off from the wall, a switch is flipped and I turn in to who I’ve always been deep inside.  It is such a good feeling to have back.

I love both swimming and running.  I have for a long time, and this continues to be true.

3.)  I became fully vaccinated against Covid-19 this month, two weeks after getting my second Pfizer dose on April 6^th.  (Fully vaccinated doesn’t necessarily mean fully protected since it has 95% efficacy and there are variants that I’m probably not protected against.)

I’m running a lot slower than I would have hoped for myself in April of this year, since my average pace in January through March was in the 11:30s and 11:40s and I hope (and think) I’m improving my running speed. 

I’m not a super human, and a few days were affected by my immune response to the vaccine (I’m looking at you April 7, 8, and 9).  Later in the month was probably affected by my wanting to do too much in a single day (swim, lift weights, and run), I’m also trying to figure out what times and effort levels work the best for swimming, strength training, and running, so it might take awhile before I can do all three to the level I want without negatively impacting my running.

These aren’t “excuses” for my slow running, I’m just trying to analyze the complex reasons my running speed might be slower this month than last month.  I had three really good tempo runs this month (and one not-so-good tempo run), which gives me hope for continued improvement.  My slow easy pace doesn’t really mean all that much in regards to my overall conditioning at the moment.

4.)  My weight is the same at the end of April compared to the beginning.  While I haven’t actually “lost” weight this month, I have noticed my pajama bottoms and running leggings are both looser than I remember from a month ago, which suggests I’m continuing to add muscle and lose fat.

Why isn’t my weight going back down from last year?  I can tell physically I’ve put on a lot of muscle this year.  I know it’s impossible for me to have converted all the fat I gained last year (13 pounds) into muscle this year (I am not taking testosterone, so 13 pounds muscle gain in 4 months is probably not what is happening), but the fat does seem to be decreased compared to January (a lot).  My triceps are even more bulgy now than they were before I started swimming – is it from the weights or from the swimming? I don’t know.  All of that is good.  The numbers on the scale aren’t changing, but my body clearly is. 

I’m still eating at a slight deficit (actually, sometimes a much bigger deficit now that I’m also swimming.  I don’t think I’m eating enough calories some days and that’s probably also slowing my running down a bit).  I’m trying to eat enough food, keep up with the strength training, swim, and run.  I’m probably slightly undermedicated with my thyroid hormone which means getting that extra weight to come off while not cutting calories a huge amount is going to be very difficult and not something I’m willing to do right now.

All my reasons for wanting to lose that 13 pounds remain.  I’m at a normal BMI, I can afford to lose this weight slowly, but I need to take pressure off my knees especially while running and need to get rid of visceral fat I gained last year while on estrogen suppressing drugs.  Ultimately, I don’t think I need to get back down to 150 pounds with the added muscle, because I think that might be too low for me.  I do think I could stand to lose a few more pounds of fat, but taking into consideration how healthy my body feels with extra muscle which also adds weight, maybe I should aim for 155-158 for now and see how I feel at that weight.  I haven’t given up on my weight loss plans, I’m just realizing my body is changing a lot even without the scale changing, and maybe I need to take that into consideration.  I don’t need to be endruance runner thin, I don’t think that is the ideal body goal for myself, so my BMI will always be above 22 or 23 (right now it’s 24.1, which seems high for how thin I’m looking, but BMI is not a good indicator for health, just like TSH is not a good indicator of thyroid hormone function). My ultimate goal is long term health, preserving my joints, and reducing inflammation especially around my visceral organs, and it’s possible 158 pounds is just as healthy for me as 150-152 would be, if I’m accomplishing those goals.

So the plan is to stick to what I’m doing now. I’m focusing on swimming, running, eating healthy foods to fuel those things, trying to keep my energy level up throughout the day.  I’m still tracking calories, still “undereating” most days, but trying to make sure that I eat enough to fuel all the exercise I am doing.  It is possible my weight will just stay at 162 because there’s parts of the day where my metabolism gets really, really slow due to thyroid hormone issues.  There’s not much I can do about that.  I am happy with my overall body progress so far this year, despite little change on the scale. While I mention my weight in these blogs frequently, my focus this year has been on strength training, running, and now swimming. Whether the scale changes or not isn’t the only indicator of progress for me, and I’m not too bothered that it is not changing.

Checking in with my New Year, New Running Goals.

1.)  I am fully vaccinated!  Woo hoo! 

2.)  I haven’t signed up for any races yet.  I’m still hesitant because I’m not convinced races around me are going to happen in person (they probably already are happening, but I’m still a little nervous about in-person events).

When will I start racing again?  Races have never been a big motivator for my running.  I don’t train to race. I race to justify the amount of training that I do, and to push me outside of my “run by myself all the time” comfort zone.  This is probably not normal for a lot of runners but it is who I am.

This month I have been more focused on getting vaccinated, getting back to swimming, and focusing on other things in my life.  I also think I will be disappointed in myself if I don’t run any races at all this year, I just can’t predict what the next several months will look like for me yet, so I’m hesitant to sign up for races right now.

3.)  I ran with my nephew, twice.  I’m not sure if this counts since he was riding in the stroller, but I did unplug from my headphones and we talked about playgrounds, birds, cars, airplanes, and mailboxes.  Well, I talked, he mostly pointed and nodded (he’s almost two, and says “yeah, K (for Ok), nah, der (there), car, mama, dada”, and he babbles and can make owl and pig sounds, but that’s basically it for right now).

I would still like to run with other people. This is a work in progress, I can only do so much at one time.

4.)  I started swimming again. I’m very happy I’ve accomplished this goal.

5.)  I have continued to be consistent with my weight training!  This is one of the best things I have done for myself in 2021.

I have zero doubt the only reason my left shoulder is able to swim this year is that I’ve been consistent with my shoulder work (stretches to unfreeze it) since January, and also I’ve done a ton of work to strengthen the muscles surrounding the joint.  Even without full range of motion (it’s only minorly impinged now – not same ROM as the right though), it is stronger than it was on January 1, 2021.

6.) I stretched for 30 out of 30 days in April!

7.) Crosstraining – I think I did a little yoga this month, I’ve also started swimming.

Audiobook round-up, April 2021

I listen to mostly non-fiction books while running, but some of those books (Caste and Medical Apartheid especially) are really heavy and I’ve started listening to a cozy mystery series as well to counterbalance some heavy non-fiction.  I’m now up to 39 books for the year (most of those audiobooks), compared to about 60 books total for last year (zero audiobooks).  I’ve listened to mainly podcasts while running since 2014, this audiobook thing is new and unexpected and exciting for me to get through so many books so quickly.  I still like podcasts, but they don’t engross me the same way a good audiobook does. I recommend all the non-fiction books this month with maybe the one running book – Running with the Kenyans – as an exception. There were many parts of that book about a white guy going to Kenya and describing his interactions with Kenyan women and comments about the intelligence of Kenyans that made me very uncomfortable. No race is smarter or less smart than any other race. White people showing up places and people of other races commenting on how smart the white person is, that perpetuates the mistaken belief that some races are inherently smarter than others, and the book does not point this out but I am doing that here, The audiobook Caste, however, does point this out. Caste is an excellent book – I highly recommend this book for any person but especially Americans that need to come to terms with our history of racism – to go forward we need to learn from the past and change.

Fiction:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder – Joanne Fluke

Strawberry Shortcake Murder – Joanne Fluke

Blueberry Muffin Murder – Joanne Fluke

Lemon Meringue Pie Murder – Joanne Fluke

Non-fiction:

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents – Isabel Wilkerson

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong – James W. Loewen

Running with the Kenyans – Adharanand Finn

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black American from Colonial Times to the Present – Harriet A. Washington

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age – Annalee Newitz

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past – David Reich

Human Errors – Nathan H. Lents

Current thyroid medication: 137.5 mcg levothyroxine (T4) daily, 10 mcg liothyronine (T3) split up into 5 mcg twice a day (started August 11, 2020). 

Current weight:  162.3 lb  (same as end of March) 

Weight January 1, 2021: 163.3  lb

Weight change since Jan 1, 2021: -1.0 lb

Previous month: March 2021

Next month: May 2021