Jumping back into the blog

4 May, 2020 Off By Renée

It’s been about a month and a half since I last wrote and that was at the beginning of the lockdown here in the Netherlands.

Admittedly the first several weeks were really hard, mentally; I just was consumed with the news and not feeling much like doing anything. The first two weeks I went into the office a couple of times and then our company decided that there was no reason to be in the office and to do so would be at your own risk. So I settled into home-working.

It’s been going ok – we have a daily video team meeting – and for the most part I can get my work done and even have a sport break in the middle of the day most days now. Sometimes there is extra stress – because I work in treasury and the market is so volatile, there are sometimes extra things that need to be done at short notice. But I’m rolling with it. What else can I do?

I didn’t have any goals at all for April – I think I was just trying to get through each day and each week. And to be honest, I’m happily surprised at how well I ended the month:

Running

I had 15 runs in April with a total of 103,5KM. That’s the most I’ve run since August of last year. And we all know what happened in August (and if we don’t, let’s not dredge it up again).

Of note are the Virtual SocialDistancing parkruns I’m doing – basically still getting up on Saturday morning and running 5KM and submitting my results to the group . We all have parkrun registrations and though it’s unofficial, we can run the same route if we want and report back if we have a PB that day or not. So far we have done 7 virtual parkruns and I’ve done all 7. As for my own parkrun, we have no idea when it will happen. The date where more “mass” gatherings can possibly take place here in NL is September 1st. But I don’t know if parkrun falls into that category since we’d likely have less than 100 runners (more likely around 30 – 60 but you never know) .

Also Ron and I are making the effort to run “long” on Sundays; I’ve been doing these as walk/ run intervals.

Walking

I planned on a few more walks than what i “officially” did. Two lunch walks but quite some unofficial walking to and from my run starts.

Biking

On Monday 27th of April we had a holiday here in the Netherlands – King’s Day – which normally would be celebrated out and about with the entire population of the country but obviously this year was cancelled. So odd. Its usually the biggest street party of the year. Unless of course our football (soccer) team is in the European or World Cup.

It was a beautiful day so we rode 47KM to Nijmegen and back a different way. Our first long ride of the year! My bum is not used to riding for 3.5 hours though so we’ll have to get a few more rides in!

The Face of Nijmegen
The Face of Fonzie

Les Mills On Demand

I am so glad to have this subscription at home! I have been doing RPM since December when we got our spin bike at home but I’ve tried bodystep (not so sure about that) and started up bodypump again.

I did RPM 5 times in April and Bodypump 3 times. I even bought the smartbar set for bodypump because our bar at home is just too heavy for me (10KG) and you can’t get the weights on and off quickly. The smartbar set is equivalent to 10 months at the gym… so I will quit the gym but pay my savings back for 10 months as if I’m still going. We are lucky to have vacation pay included in our salary here in the Netherlands (which is about 2/3rd month’s pay) and since it’s very likely we aren’t going anywhere this year, I used part of my vacation pay to buy the set. I am already very happy to have it!

Lots of sweat equity with RPM
Bodypump before I got my smartbar set

Cardio & Strength

At the beginning of the month I attempted to do my own cardio and strength program at home – based on runner’s training that Ron had. I did that twice. I just prefer to have a whole workout mapped out for me and all I have to do is follow it without breaking a flow to check what I have to do next.

I have actually used my pilates roll several times for stretching purposes as well and we have a box I sometimes use to do lunges (with a pilates cushion for my toes on my left foot).

New Month – Let’s set some goals

Y’all know I don’t really like the pressure of goals but I feel like having a bit of a schedule is helping me physically and mentally right now so I’ve decided to go ahead and have goals for the month of May. Let’s see what happens!

Normally I would join the Weekly Run Down hosted by Kim and Deborah but I’m too late this week and besides, this is more like a monthly run down, right?

How have you been? How was April for you? Any goals for May?