May Goal Check-In
Good morning friends!
How are you doing this morning? I hope everyone that just enjoyed a long weekend had a wonderful Memorial Day. Unfortunately I was not as lucky and spent the day at work in my office, but the weather was absolutely gorgeous so I took full advantage last night and had my first BBQ’d dinner of the season. Recipe to come!
Since it’s officially the last day of May, it’s time for yet another one of these:
It seems that on recent goal check ins, I’ve done either really well or really poorly on my 5 goals. If you missed previous ones, you can check them out on my Top Posts page. This month was quite similar, with a couple of major successes and one glaring fail! Let’s start with a good one, shall we?
Yep, I completed it alright! My grand total as of today, May 31st, is 123.85 miles. I pretty much stuck to the mileage plan that I posted here, but found that I was actually able to run further than planned on my hard run (Monday) days than I initially thought. The final numbers looked like this:
I did suffer a bit from shin splints near the beginning of the month when I was doing my hard 9 mile runs. These typically involved some balls-to-the-wall intervals and I think the impact, coupled with my old-ish shoes is what caused the pain. By week 3, I started doing some of the exercises we used to do when I was on my university’s cross country team, and that seemed to help a bit. (You can find out more about these in this article from Runner’s World. Doing drills like this can help to prevent injuries and train your muscles to run more efficiently, so I figured trying them out couldn’t hurt – even if I looked like a complete moron trying to kick myself in the butt with my heels.
Yep, I did it! The course I signed up for should take me several months because some of the modules can be done online but the others have to be done in-class, and the course provider has to travel to the area for me to do these classes. I plan to get cracking on the online sections over the month of June, and find out when the in-class modules are available in my area. This month I also took a product knowledge-type test that many of the employees at my company also had to do, and I’m pleased to report I did much better than I originally anticipated!
Ok – I told you I was going to be honest, and this is the one glaring fail on this month’s report. My outdoor stroll only happened once, and it wasn’t a run at all – it was a nice leisurely after-dinner walk with my roomie. In all fairness to myself, I (partly) blame our crappy weather for this! I’m pretty sure it rained for about 3 weeks out of 4 this month, which doesn’t make for very appealing conditions when you’re a fair-weather runner like me. Also, I usually run at 5am and it’s hard to find running buddies to come outside and play at that time in the morning. It probably wasn’t overly safe to run on my own in the dark either, so I’m sort of ok with failing this one. (However… I am quite a lot more visible in the dark now that I’ve procured my new kicks….)
Initially I wasn’t so sure I’d enjoy doing this because telling yourself you’re going to do anything every single day can be a bit intimidating. Things really weren’t going so well at the beginning of the month because every time I tried to do this, it happened to be at night and I would just fall asleep. Since I’m not a quitter, I decided to make some changes. When I realized that my mind was having trouble shutting up and just focusing on breathing or whatever it is that you’re “supposed” to concentrate on when you meditate, I told myself that these 5 minutes could be spent meditating on my own, listening to some sort of guided meditation or podcast, praying, or just doing that whole listening-to-my-breath thing that I’m still not very good at.
(Source)
Based on some of your recommendations, I tried out things like The Meditation Podcast (available on iTunes – I think they’ve stopped making them because the most recent is from 2009, but it’s still good), as well as a few other random YouTube meditation videos like those from QuietMindCafe. At first I thought they were a little too out there for me, but once I got into it, these really were quite enjoyable! I didn’t think I’d ever say this but I might even go as far as to say that I look forward to this part of my day. 
Ommmm to that!
Yes, yes, yes!! This was certainly accomplished, and I have to give credit where credit is due and thank my roommate for her expert gardening advice. (She wouldn’t claim to be an expert if you asked her, but she’s far more knowledgeable than me.) Earlier this month, we bought a bunch of plants for our flower box and planters – there isn’t a ton of gardening space at our house, but that’s ok because this amount is challenging enough for me to look after!
You may remember that at the beginning of the month, our flower box looked like this:
Since then, the duck hatched its eggs and abandoned its nest, conveniently leaving lots of grubby cracked shells for us to clean up. This was just in time for our gardening plans, because we bought some plants…
…then pulled whatever weeds needed to be pulled. Finally, we planted the following little arrangements (and a few unpictured ones)…
Unfortunately because of the rain, we didn’t manage to get these plants in until last weekend. The plants took a bit of a beating last week – ya know, just a little May hail and the occasional torrential downpour. Thus, they don’t look like they’re flourishing just yet, but I have confidence that given the gorgeous 20-30 degrees Celsius temps we’re getting this week, they’ll be growing like crazy soon! Oh, and my basil plant? She’s a beauty!
I realize that this isn’t the best comparison picture because the one on the left was zoomed in and cropped, but just know that the green bowl behind the plat in week 4 can hold about 20 of those tomatos on the left. My little baby is growing up so fast! There aren’t quite have enough leaves to make anything spectacular and basil-based like pesto yet, but I’ve included a few leaves in some recent salads. The taste of the fresh herbs in comparison to dried simply cannot be beat.
So tell me…
- What were some of your goals for May? How did you do?
- If you celebrated Memorial Day, what did you get up to?
i LOVE THESE POSTS OF URS!!! GREAT job on the 100 miles! u KKILLED IT!! and dw about the runs outdoors.. u still got some great workouts!!
That basil plant is just begging to be a caprese salad!
can’t believe it’s the last day of may!
loved your recap, angela. major congrats on achieving the running mileage goal. and i don’t blame you for not getting outside more – yup, totally terrible may weather and 5 a.m., by yourself, running?? yea, i’d not do that, either.
great work on the gardening and meditating. your goals touch so many life areas – great variety.
i did quite well with my goals – recap on the blog tomorrow. it’s down to the wire TODAY to see if i’ll complete one of them – yikes!
Thanks Cathy!! And good luck with those goals too – I have a feeling I know what the down-to-the-wire one is!
Hope you can get it done today!
I think that F for running for running outside is a good thing – better safe than sorry! I always get nervous when I hear about women running at dark by themselves – I think you’re being smart!
Me too! I keep reminding myself about those stories – like you said, better safe than sorry!
I love these goals. I didn’t really have anything set for May, but I want to add the meditation you mentioned for the whole month of June. I think that stillness would really do wonders for me
It’s definitely helped me to slow down a bit. Even though I often still feel like I have about 6 squillion things going on in my head, it has definitely helped me to wind down a bit, be more self-aware, and in-tune with myself. I think I’ll keep it up for June too! Good luck!
Great job with the goals! I’m especially impressed with the running and meditation. I reached my goal for my 5k. I beat my last year’s time by a significant amount. Woohoo!
WOW! Congratulations girl, that’s amazing! I hope you rewarded yourself somehow after smashing your time!
Wow, what beautiful plants! And those are some great goals…I have a similar goal for June to keep my plants healthy as well. I accomplished my goals for May: start and maintain a blog, and keep a half marathon training plan going!
Congratulations! That’s awesome. Good luck on your half marathon!
Your goal check ins are so inspiring!
I give you a pass for the outdoor runs. I know the weather has been crappy there! I can’t do outdoor workouts with bad weather either!!
Oh my gosh your basil plant grew so much!! Kudos! Did you find that it was easy to take care of? Just water and sun? I want to get one but I’m pretty sure I’ll kill it! haha
And also, I know I’ve said this before – but you are a running rockstar!!
Yep! Just water and sun – but I didn’t stick it outside. It seemed to do better on my kitchen table with regular watering (like every other day). It managed to survive all of our very rainy May with not a whole lot of sun, so I think I’ll need to water it more this month now that it’s so hot. Trust me, if I can do it, I’m sure you can too!