2020 in review

Ironically, January, when the world was relatively normal, was a quiet month. At least Planet Ice finally opened after years or delays.

In February I braved Storm Ciara to complete my British Triathlon strength and conditioning coaching training and the 49ers almost won Super Bowl LIV. I completed my macronutrition course with Wageningen.

Lockdown came into force in March putting an end to spin class, Leeds Dock social run and pilates. Worse, my three-swims-per-week was finally paying off and I was up to 3km continuous front crawl when the pools closed. There were some highlights, though. We had a good time at Michelle’s comedy gig, I spoke at Leeds Front End and I launched my web accessibility course.

I launched my Google Tag Manager course in April and we held a virtual Sunday Assembly Leeds. With lockdown in full flow, Ironman launched their virtual events and I set an unofficial PB of 21:06 at Woodhouse Moor parkrun.

I did a lot of running during May as I started the Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee, the virtual Hadrian’s Wall ultra and the EveryMayDay 10k challenge. Not bad for a month in which I would have joined the 250 club at parkrun. Unfortunately I also registered my first duathlon DNF when my rear derailleur broke during Ironman VR9. I was busy learning, completing courses on nutrition with Wageningen and Stanford as well as one on sport science and another on physiology. I was busy publishing, too, with courses on CSS Grid, Stripe and Nutrition as well as publishing a book.

It was another month of running in June, completing the virtual Grand Canyon ultra and my first 24-hour race, completing 86.44 km at Endure24. I also launched my Doctrine course.

I finally took a break from running in July when I finished the Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee. 1,022 km covered in 69 days, averaging 14.81 km per day. It’s a good job because Garmin had a 5-day outage that they never apologised for. I launched courses on Slim, Fear of Driving and Mindfulness for Sleep and started publishing strength and conditioning workouts on YouTube.

I had one thing on my mind during August and that was completing my second full distance triathlon. Which I did with the self-supported Woolenman. Not the week in Copenhagen we were hoping for, but a great race anyway. I also did my first organised event, the Evolve Quarter. I launched three new courses on Symfony, Heroku for Node.js and teaching mindfulness, as well as completing a physiology with Duke. Worfolk Media posted its first profitable year. In my spare time, I started reading Agatha Christie. The Tour de Frace became the first Grand Tour of the year, with the Giro delayed and the Tour de Yorkshire cancelled. Despite the challenges, Kieran & Shweta successfully tied the knot.

In September we headed to the Lake District for a short family holiday and so I could complete EpicMan Windermere. Which was a great race except for my Nike Vaporflys ripping. My family completed their first open water triathlon and I launched the Mindfulness for Anxiety app.

October is birthdays month for myself and Venla who turned 4. I completed my one and only sportive of the year at Daffodils and we finished our family challenge of LEJOG. I expanded my coaching to include the run club side of Hyde Park Harriers and published my course on CBT for Social Anxiety. Elina started a new job and completed her ATT Level 2 accountancy qualification.

I completed my yoga teacher training in November and started teaching a weekly class with the triathlon club. Anxiety Leeds began an online trial and we opened a second branch of the Leeds Anxiety Clinic in Islington. I launched a course on SASS and we reunited with some old friends for some regular Zoom socials. Elina naturalised as a British citizen.

Finally, in December, we got some much welcome news when the UK approved the first COVID vaccine. I reached 1,000 miles of running in 2020 and used my recovery time to watch lots of The Good Place and even expanded my film choices. My Running For Beginners Facebook group reached 3,000 members (having started the year with only 100!) and I completed the Alps to Ocean ultra. Online Mindfulness School opened its doors.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2021 at 11:00 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.