Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening?

I currently am off from work, so I am using a lot of my time sinking in a lot of listening training time. One thing I'm noticing is that while my listening skills ARE improving, they seem to be moving almost at a snail's pace even though I've been watching Japanese stuff for literally hours a day for weeks. At the same time though, I've noticed the indirect effect of my listening exercises on my reading has been tremendous and has been well outpacing my listening skill itself, even though I'm not directly working on my reading.

Is this normal? I'll even go through some episodes and can relax a bit, only to come back and watch another one and hardly understand a single thing!