I had surprisingly good results on goals this July given how much was going on all month.

On the exercise front, I was able to get the same quantity of runs in even though we started out with the holiday weekend, which always makes sticking to patterns and habits challenging for me. Plus all month long has been exceptionally busy (more than usual) at the office. I’m planning on starting up a more formal training schedule in August in prep for a couple of long races later in the year, so I already tried to incorporate some long runs on the weekend at a lower tempo pace to start building the endurance. I got 46 miles in versus the 42 from June. For the first time this year I officially closed out the month 10 miles ahead of the pace mark.

On a different exercise-related note, I’m trying to bring cycling back into the regimen, mostly for cross-training with the running routine, but also because I enjoy being able to commute to and from the office.

I’ve still been able to squeeze in reading time somehow with a couple of really enjoyable fiction reads in The Dark Forest and Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu collection, two that have been in the backlog a long time. Both are well worthy of longer write ups at some point. I’ve just now cracked open Liu’s final installment of that trilogy: Death’s End, which has to be an exciting climax given how original and expansive book two was.

I’m 3/5ths of the way there now on the running target, feeling good. Let’s see how early I can hit all these marks.