October By The Numbers

Welcome to this month’s edition of By The Numbers, where I analyze the passive data I collect all month from my watch, like steps and sleep. I review how many workouts I completed and what they mostly comprised of. The idea is that over time I can spot trends and make adjustments for the following month. This is the 13th month I have done this. Reflecting back on the previous year, I must say, it’s working.

Steps: 402,824 for a daily average of 12,995 steps

An increase of nearly 2000 steps per day from September. In October I was ramping up my running preparing for Stone Cat. Yard work like leaf blowing and raking and stacking fire wood accumulate steps too. About what I expected and in this upcoming month, it will drop once again as I back off from running to let my body recover.

Sleep: 7 hours 27 minute average

A decrease from last month’s 7:54 average. For this, I entirely blame Clementine who has been in the routine of waking me up very early each morning. There’s another thing to factor too. I upgraded my 6 year old watch and must say, the newer technology on the watch, specifically the sleep tracking and heart rate sensor are a huge upgrade. Due to that I’m getting less sleep “fluff.” The old watch would track 20 minutes of reading in bed as sleeping sometimes, but not with the new. It’s more sensitive to tossing and turning in the night as well and those minutes add up. All in all, sleep has been good this month, short if anything. I’m enjoying all the new data on recovery I’m getting, like HRV and a sleep score, perhaps I’ll add them into this report once I have a better understanding of them myself.

Workouts: 33

All my rest days took place the week of the race - probably a bad idea. I was trying to cram for the test though and just ride it straight into the race. Didn’t work. I lifted more than I had all summer in October. I did 8 in the gym workouts. Mostly power cleans and pull ups.

Running totals: 23 runs, 22 hours, 110 miles, 10,000 vertical feet.

Up from 80 miles in September, October had my third highest distance this year, followed by July and August.

That’s a wrap. As always, I hope this inspires you to look back and look at some of the data you may be collecting and see if you can spot any trends or make adjustments for the following month. For me, I’ll be spending more time lifting weights, with a focus on feeding my body good movement, and trying (as always) to get to bed earlier.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain