Running Chick

I logged another 16+ mile week this week, capping it off with a 6-ish mile run this morning. My total for July was 71 miles. That’s my highest monthly mileage ever. The last time I was close to that was back in March 2008 when I logged 65 miles. They were not pain-free. Milestones!

Since I don’t have anything more useful to say, here’s a summary of the last week in arbitrary, strange and meaningless pictures.

My lunch. The pizza was made with more natural ingredients than the yogurt. Tasted better, too.

Hot rod and trailer on US41.

Somebody got fancy new running shoes.

The Great Lakes Research Center is coming right along.

August 14th, I get my HamSexy on.

It is not necessarily cooler at McLain Park but the trail sure is pretty.

I wanted to knock over this little rock tower that somebody painstakingly erected. I took a picture instead.

Lighthouse @ McLain Park. I did not go swimming.

New fire truck.

Old fire truck. I think it said 1919 on the front.

Probably part the reason why the first three miles of my morning run sucked so much. That and the million beers I had.

You know, I never really checked to see if anybody was inside the wax building at the Tech Trails while I was narcissistically snapping pictures of my reflection of the windows.

My new claim to fame: running on the new sidewalk by the Tech football field before it’s actually a sidewalk.

I picked up a giant crow’s feather to bring back for Kitty. I didn’t have anywhere to put it, so I stuck it in my hat. It’s the next fashion craze, I’m certain of it.

My new and bestest running partner who just completed week 3 of the Couch to 5k program and is already faster than I am.  What a booger.

I talked to my PT the other week and she gave me the go-ahead to move all my runs outdoors. Yay! Just one week earlier, I renewed my gym membership for three months. Doh! Oh well, it'll be nice to fall back on the treadmill if the weather gets out of hand.

I’m also supposed to start slowly weaning myself off of the mp3 tickety-ticks to see if I can hold my cadence at 174.  I pondered how I could do that without my mp3, then decided to see if Garmin made a footpod to track cadence. Turns out they do! Say hello to the Garmin Footpod.

My first impression was that it was bigger than I thought it was going to be. According to the manual, it’s 42 mm x 10 mm (1.6 inches x .4 inches), so I guess that’s not all that big. It’s smaller than the face on the Garmin 305, for what it’s worth.

There’s a clip on the back that gets woven through the laces. The clip seemed fairly tight & secure, so I didn’t have any fears about it falling off once it got fastened on.

Here’s a side view. It does look rather large, doesn’t it?

Setup was easy - added it to my Forerunner 305, give it a minute to pair, then walk start walking around. Presto, cadence!

I took it for a spin last night, all anxious to see how accurate it was and I used my mp3 to I could make sure I was staying on pace. I’m supposed to keep my strides no lower than 87 (it measures strides on one foot, so half of 174), which is what the footpod recorded for the majority of my run. Sometimes, however, it seems like it’d lose it’s connection and the cadence would be reading in the low 50s (note the dips) even though I had not changed my stride. I’m not sure what that was all about. It also stayed in place and I didn’t even notice it on my shoe.

I’ll have to take it on a few more runs to see if I want to toss the mp3 in favor of the footpod so the jury’s still out.

In other news, HOLY COW IT’S HOT OUTSIDE. High 80s, 90s, 100s.  Did I move to Arizona and nobody told me? Sheesh.  This damn heat even forced me to get out of bed before work and go running. Can you imagine! Josh is working his way through the Couch to 5k running program, and he decided that there was no way in hell he was running in 90 degree weather after work, so we were on the Nara Trail at 06:00 on Tuesday morning working our way through his session (Wk 2, workout 1).  I believe it was 70 and muggy as heck outside. I’m glad we were only out for 30 minutes. After work, I had to get in my regular session, so we headed out to McLain Park in the hopes it would be cooler. It wasn’t. I ran through the park (holy quagmire of trailers and tents) and then jumped in the lake.

It was cold.

I could only go forward an inch or two at a time before I was finally deep enough for it to not matter any more.

It felt good though, I can’t remember the last time I was swimming in Lake Superior.

Here, have a beer or two on me.

We need to celebrate, y’all because I ran 19 miles this week 100% pain free.  Granted, my calves are so tight that I could barely manage more than a shuffle getting out of bed this morning after yesterday’s long run, and my insoles gave me blisters the size of dimes (remember this?) but no shin pain. The last time I ran that many weekly miles was back in April 2009, but those miles sure weren’t pain free.

Laugh away, but those miles came mostly by accident. I’ve been hovering around 10-13/week and didn’t have any intentions of doing anything different. I churned out four on the treadmill on Tuesday as normal. My friend Liz, who is in town vacationing, gave me a call and asked me to run with her.  So I ended up doing three on the treadmill and 3.1 miles with her (her farthest run ever!)  for a total of six on Thursday.

Knowing that I was already sitting on 10 miles for the week and not wanting to go much higher, I only intended to do four or five on Saturday. Liz wanted to run again, so I figured I’d run to the Nara trail, run two with her and then catch a ride back home with her. But then when I left in the morning, it was nice & cool outside, I had lots of energy and just felt like running longer. So I ran the 3.25 miles to the trail, ran 2 with Liz and then ran 4 back to my house. That’s 9.25 miles for Saturday and a grand total of 19.41 for the week.

When I offloaded the stats for the week from my GPS, I thought it was a mistake. Then I wished I would have paid more attention to my mileage before I left on Saturday because I would have gone an extra .6 to make it an even 20 miles. What can I say, I like nice even numbers.

Funny thing is that on Tuesday I sent an update email to my PT and asked her if she had any mileage limitations she wanted me to stick with. I haven’t heard back from her yet, but when I do, I hope she tells me no because I have a feeling she might have some stern words for me when I tell her what I did. Oops.