After a fucking awesome November, I was pretty confident at the start of the month. I decided, again, to throttle myself, especially with the holidays coming up. So I set up, what I thought were some pretty reasonable goals for the month.
- Resume training.
- Winter cleaning/organizing.
Resume Training
Holy shit, yes. I took a couple weeks off after the Tour de Tucson, but it was time to get back to the shit. First thing I did was do a little reorganizing of the bike stuff, which dovetailed nicely into the other goal this month about winter cleaning/organizing. And I built my training program for Base 1. I had originally intended on a mid-volume plan, but I opted to go low-volume so I could work in some gym/weights time. And training went really well. I was able to get in a bunch of base mileage rides right out of the gate and start building some core/leg power. Toward the end of the month, I also got Base 2 planned, and ramped up the time commitment a little bit so that I could continue to pile on miles in January. Completed on December 31st. WIN.
Winter Cleaning/Organizing
Holy fucking shit. So much organization needed to happen here. My disorganizational skills had taken things way too fucking far and it was getting to the point where I was getting frustrated as fuck. So I started re-examining how I was storing things and what I had. The first order of business was to get my desk area cleaned up and organized, and the first thing there was to get a much larger bookshelf to put by the desk. Did that, and then moved the old one to Sam’s room, as he needed stuff. I did some reorg in the bedroom, too, but all in all, I did not get nearly as far as I would have liked. PARTIAL WIN.
Minor/Other Accomplishments
- adopted a puppy, something we’d been talking about for quite awhile
- got married in a courthouse ceremony
- got my 101 Things in 1001 Days running again because I thought it’d be fun
- registered for Granny’s Gravel Grinder and The Heywood gravel events, and got registration for the DAMn (Day Across Minnesota) on my calendar for January 6th
Progress on the 101 Things in 1001 Days
The whole list is here.
I finished one item on the list: get married! It was a quick courthouse wedding so we could take advantage of insurance and tax stuff for 2024, but we had a blast. We laughed, we cried, we tied the knot.
Making progress on others, including:
6. Build up a new road bike. I got the frame, a BMC Roadmachine VRS 2, for Christmas. As soon as the annual bonus hits, I’m buying a SRAM Force AXS group, and some Zipp 404 rims for it. The goal is to have this finished by the end of March.
34. Do 365 brain puzzles (sudoku, ken ken, crosswords, etc.). Sitting at about 20 so far, and given my pace, I may up the goal to 730. The goal was to do one every third-ish day or so, but I’m thinking that I’ll be able to blast through the 365 fairly quickly.
37. Finish three Zelda games I haven’t completed. (0/3). I just started Tears of the Kingdom. I’d like to have this one finished by the end of January or so.
Blockers
- PUPPY!
- Got a bunch of Lego and video games for Christmas.1
Conclusions
I really need to not plan things for December. It’s too damn busy a month.
(Featured image created with/generated by Adobe Firefly 2 Beta. Prompt: vivid illustration of a programmer working at a computer while it snows heavily outside the window.)