By the Numbers: August

Last month, I added up all my miles, hours spent working out, fitness classes attended, etc. and really enjoyed looking at the month as a whole. It made me appreciate what goes into each week and to focus on what I did accomplish instead of always where I fall short.

This month was not nearly as consistent, and that is very obvious through the final numbers. Still, I felt like it was necessary to be honest. I wanted to look at the "bad" with the "good" - and I just hope next month is better.

• I planned to workout 26 days this month; however, ended with just 15/31 days. I always have a minimum goal of 50% of the month, so at least I hit that. I would say that this was my lowest percentage in a few months, but I'd have to go back and double check my planner to say for sure. The main culprit was pretty clearly three of five weekends out of town. On a more positive note, 8 of these 15 days were "double" workouts, meaning I either went to two classes, went to a class and ran, etc.

•  You may remember late last month I shared a very assertive (for me) half-marathon training program. It consisted of way more double digit runs that I've ran before in a half-training cycle and four runs per week. Had I been able to follow that this month, I would have ended up with 122 miles; which would have been a huge jump from the 58 I had in July. Needless to say, those three weekends out of town again hindered me way more than I would have expected. I did't have any weekend in which I ran both my Saturday and Sunday run and did not even get to double digits. I ended with just 50.19 miles. I was pretty content with the miles I did put in, happy with my paces, and satisfied with where I'm at. Frustrated that my left knee is giving me a hard time, so hoping I can shake that and plan to be a little more reserved with how quickly I am adding to my long runs and weekly total following the month I had that I would have liked 5 weeks ago.

Brat Trot - ran 8.2.14

• I planned to go to 17 group fitness classes, and ended up going to 12. Two missed were the result of TRX not having openings, one was thinking I'd actually go to a 5:15AM class, and two were the result of shuffling my schedule around.

• I intended to do 3 at-home cross training/strength workouts the week the Y was closed, but ended up with just two.

• Altogether, I ended up with 18 hours, 38 minutes, 46 seconds of training. Shabby compared to last month, but not bad when you consider that was over the course of 15 days.

I won't stop setting overly ambitious goals to start each month. While it would be great to get in every planned workout and run, I know life is undoubtedly going to "get in the way". September is going to be different, with going back to work and all. I can only hope to fall somewhere between a really good month, and a mediocre (at best) month.

How far in advance do you plan out your workouts? Do you do better going on the fly or with a best laid plan? I've been planning out for the month, after going week-week with a pretty consistent plan. I probably function best somewhere between the two extremes, but only because I can get hard on myself if I miss planned workouts. I'm getting better in that area though.