The year 2023 was nothing special for us, or out of ordinary: we continued to do activities we like: cooking, running, hiking, walking, and just a little bit of skiing because of the bad snow situations last winter. What was exceptional, though, was that we didn’t do any bicycle tours last year; we just never got into planning one. Tomi continued to ride his bike to the work every day, though. In general, we just enjoyed the daily life in our old house at the foot of the Chartreuse mountain.
The renovation project of the year was a new wardrobe in the second bedroom that currently serves as an office. The old one was quite impractical with dark grey shelves that were really deep. However, the renovation was a necessity anyway; the old bathroom had a shower cabinet that took one corner of the bedroom, and its removal in the previous summer’s bathroom renovation left an empty corner in the said room.
In 2023 the most important part of our exercise regime was the 16-week marathon training plan we started in April. We followed it for sixteen weeks and then restarted it from the week five in July, only to be interrupted by our travels and the heat wave in August, and again in September by our two-week vacation in the Southern Central Massif (you can read about this adventure by following the left link at the bottom of this page). We restarted the plan again in October but soon gave up because the weather turned really bad; thereafter we just maintained a semi-regular running and yoga schedule until the end of the year.
The last two weeks of the year we spent train traveling (Interrrail) in Baden-Württemberg area in South-Western Germany. We did short train trips around the Black Forest (Schwartzwald) visiting a number of picturesque towns and doing easy day hikes on our way. We’ll soon post a journal about this trip. But before that we’ll plan a short vacation to celebrate out 20th wedding anniversary.
Here are some exercise statistics from Polar Flow:
Running (170 times): 1065km, 162h, D+ 16000m, D- 18000m.
Hiking (34 times): 310km, 99h, D+ 13000m, D- 13000m.
Walking (132 times): 662km, 162h, D+ 19500m, D- 19750m.
Yoga, Pilates, Core, Stretching (86 times): 24h.
Strength training, HIIT (32 times): 8h30.