Final session for the year

I had a super-enjoyable work stint at Cafe del Sol and then came home for a private session with Ashley to work through some of these hip/core therapy exercises that I liked so much in class the other day. Double yoga day - bodes well for 2019! Not a resolutionist, but I guess I have a goal to keep things simpler than is my natural tendency - running and yoga are a great combination, though I would like to start swimming again at some point. When I'm back in June I need to find a yoga studio in NYC that's easy to get to and that I like as much as Bliss Yoga Cayman and Yoga Garden Rive Gauche. Happy new year!

Hot yoga!

2 x 15 min walk to 6am hot yoga - the best time of day for it, because they haven't had a chance to get the room to full heat! Very nice way to start the (non-run) day. Have a 12:30 private session with the teacher from the BRT class on Saturday so that I can write down some of these things and integrate them into my daily PT.

Sunday!

60 early and easy as 1:1 jog-walk; then 75-minute flow + meditation yoga. It was a great class, though still pretty darn hot (I chose it because I was so zonked out yesterday afternoon after doing two seriously sweaty exercise sessions in the am - but I still must have sweated a litre, body heat plus high ambient heat and humidity (84F, 74% humidity).

Saturday!

Early: 75 mins as 2:1 jog-walk

Then 1hr hot yoga (compressed Bikram) mid-morning. This is good....

Monday-Friday catch-up

In fact I can give myself a big pat on the back as I did everything I meant to and did not skip and make excuses!

Mon.: 1hr as 1:1 jog-walk along the Schuylkill near my mother's house - was again feeling very smug at having booked a 3:20pm flight so that I really would have time to run in the am without being anxious or skimping on spending time with my mother either. Did PT all the days unless otherwise specified, albeit sometimes just the 9-minute absolute minimum set

Tues.: treadmill #1, 36 mins, with 1 x 12min + 2 x 6min jog with walking recovery (Brent tipped me off to new second basement fitness room that is MUCH COOLER than the ground-floor one, which is heated literally to 85F...)

Wed.: treadmill #2, much harder to make myself do, I really don't like it, so I broke it up to make it more manageable: 40 mins total, 4 x 6min work with odds as jog and evens as incline walk

Thurs.: long travel day - I did manage to do the absolutely crucial exercises while watching TV with Brent before bed - normally I don't watch TV and they are not easy to do while reading a book, but I can do the anteversion-retroversion (cat-cow on back), hamstring stretches, piriformis stretches and a couple others that way, that's good!

Fri.: up and at 'em! It helped that I was in bed and asleep EARLY and had a good long sleep of 10hr or so, so that when 5:30am came and it was time to get up, I felt mentally unready but that it was not physiologically unreasonable. 1hr as 1:1 jog-walk (that first step outside coming from winter to here is so gorgeous - moon and stars, because there is much less light pollution here, and birds making funny calls and the warm tropical smell). And 1hr brt yoga which was AMAZING - there was a middle part I have to try and reconstruct, I would love to add it to my daily routine....

Very happy to have survived holiday travel mostly unscathed and be back in a regular routine!

Fri.-Sat.

Did the crucial 9 mins of PT pre-travel Friday, this is a good rule - I do think it makes a difference to how my sciatica feels the next day.

Saturday: very nice 1hr as 1:1 at my mother's house, plus PT afterwards (Jose: I HALP.) To NJ in another couple hrs, happily for me we have hotel rooms, makes everything easier. Date with Joanna to run tomorrow in Rutherford!

Wed.-Thurs.

Wed.: 1hr as 2:1 jog walk, very nice. Had hoped to do evening yoga, but my R achilles was a bit dead/sore and I thought it would pretty certainly be smarter NOT to go and spend a lot of time standing on one leg (my only option was a full Bikram class).

Thurs.: :40 as 1:1, also nice. Dreading travel complexities, but really a week from today I'll be with Brent in Cayman, just need to make it through the next seven days and all is easy again! Worked like crazy at the office and by dint of cutting a few corners on big important job #1 and leaving smalll job #2 to do in Cayman (no biggie, though it would have been nice of course to do it before I left...), I did make it in the nick of time to Dominique's 7pm hot yin yang yoga. Which was very good and very hot.

Now need to do laundry, start packing, generally get my head around the fact of tomorrow's early departure...

Hot hatha 90

And yes, end of day yoga. Did not feel inspired, sweated buckets, but am glad I did it.

Mon.-Tues.

Mon.: 1hr as 1:1
Tues.: :40 as 1:1 (slight down week before travel)

Will go to 5pm hot yoga. (Yesterday it didn't make sense as I had to be in respectable clothes at the Institute for an 8pm concert)

Fri.-Sun.

Fri.: 40 easy as 1:1
Sat.: 90 easy as 1:1
Sun.: 90 min hot yin yang yoga

Trying to restrain urge to manage mild anxieties re: holidays and impending travels by doing TOO MUCH EXERCISE.

Wed.-Thurs.

Yesterday was just walking and stretching. Today was kinda perfect - great talk last night and workshop today at the Institute, plus a really (anomalously!) delicious lunch beforehand. 75 mins in the am as 2:1 jog-walk and a very good 90 minutes hot yin yang class with Dominique just now as well. I think I figured out my optimal yoga schedule, though I won't be able to have it till January:

Monday: 6:45-8:15 back therapy yoga with Delphine
Tuesday: 5-6:30 hot hatha with Robin
Wednesday: off day
Thursday: 7-8:30 hot yin yang with Dominique
Friday: off day
Saturday: either 3-4:30 hot hatha with Robin or 7-8 Bikram in 60 mins
Sunday: 3-4:30 hot yin yang with Dominique

My housecleaner has been coming on Wednesday at 4 which in conjunction with frequent 7pm Wednesday events at the Institute has meant it doesn't make sense to try for yoga, but her schedule has changed and she's actually handed me off to her sister, who is the concierge in the building - this means that I can drop the extra key with her in the morning (or early afternoon as the case may be!) and then she can leave it for me in the apartment when she's done, it may actually be a bit more convenient.... really tomorrow I don't have anything in the evening and could do 5pm Bikram, but I still slightly avoid the full 90-minute Bikram class, too hot for too long....

Tuesday!

On a very late schedule, but that 75 as 2:1 easy-moderate was REALLY NICE! Still a little awkwardness (I think of it as "ghost sciatica") along back of R leg, but everything else very good, very normal-feeling.

Monday

1hr as 1:1, there was actually some sun, that was nice! About to do PT, hoping to do back therapy yoga later.

Happy yoga!

Finally got a good long night of sleep, didn't get myself to earlier yoga (I always have slight aversion to doing a full 90-minute Bikram class, other hot variants are more appealing), did PT and some ball release therapy for lower back and piriformis (which I think I should add as often as I can) and then went to Dominique's excellent 90-minute "hot yin yang yoga" at 3pm. I forgot how good it is, and how different from the hot hatha....

Saturday

1hr as 1:1, physically fine but a little unsettling due to precautions in advance of potential gilet jaune demonstration - the Jardin du Luxembourgh was closed and I had to jog my loops on the sidewalk around it, not optimal. Very few civilian vehicles on the street, mostly police/fire/ambulance, though the shops in my neighborhood are for the most part open. Will do PT once I have showered, and hoping to get to 7pm yoga later.

Friday!

75 mins as 2:1 with some moderate mixed in with easy intensity! Looking forward to this one all week. Will do PT once I have put away breakfast things and am intending to go to 5pm hot yoga. (Jet lag had me up till 3, I only woke up just before 11 and it took me another hour to get out of the house for my run - thus 2pm breakfast...)

(Postscript: no yoga, 75 mins run plus 20 mins PT is enough, I will have a longer stretch at the office and go straight from there to dinner with an old friend who's in Paris briefly....)

Mid-week catchup

Hmmm, I wrote a title and then left the post empty, better catch up properly now! Overly busy week, one more evening out tomorrow and then I intend to hermitify myself...

Tues.: jet lag hit hard, plus haircut appointment was ill-timed (it is always ill-timed!); ALMOST didn't get out, but memory of how bad I felt about not having done my statutory walk on Sunday made me drag myself up and out. 70 as 1:1 jog-walk, plodding and not that fun, but I got it done (and felt more human by around the 40-minute mark).

Wed.: 60 as 1:1 jog-walk, very nice. (All these days I do PT if I don't say!)

Thurs: non-run day, normal walking + evening 1hr yoga therapy for back class. Will go to a hot class tomorrow, otherwise I will lose my hard-gained heat acclimation...

Monday

Took a zero for Sunday, regrettably; the first for a long time and I really don't want it to happen again soon! Today was good. 1hr as 1:1, very nice and gray morning, spent the day at the office catching up on various misc. stuff, hung around there till it was time for 6:45 back therapy yoga as I was pretty sure that if I went home, I wasn't making it back out. Lots of evening plans this week which rather thwarts my desire to be all run/yoga/write all the time....

Saturday!

:55 easy and early as 1:1 jog-walk (slightly miscalculated turnaround, was shooting for an hour), met up with Brent for 15 mins at Cafe del Sol, then 1hr BRT yoga at Bliss. This is a great combo - hard to imagine a better class for runners, it's exactly what I most need. Now to get organized for departure....