Running Chick

Happy Snowy Saturday, Happy Valentine’s Day, Happy March and Happy every other day I missed since my last post.  Let’s jump right in with the updates, shall we?

Training officially started at the beginning of February, and I’ve been using the same schedule that I did last summer, running four times/week.  I had an okay fitness base built up from December & January, but it still felt like a bit of a struggle to hit my paces.  Combined with lots of snow and some cold patches which forced me to have several dates with the treadmill, and that equates to February turning out to be not that pleasant of a month.  Still, I only missed one run and ended the month with 61.50 miles.

I’m feeling a lot stronger and peppier now, and so far this month I’ve logged 27 miles, with a little over 20 miles this week.  The roads are mostly bare now, which is such a welcome state after spending the last couple of months slogging away in the squishy snow.  There are still some spots which are super icy and I had three close calls this morning on my long run where I slipped and ended up skidding on the ice, arms & legs flailing around.  I had to remind myself to proceed with extreme caution because I’m currently helping Josh as he recovers from this:

You can hop on over to his blog to get full story, but the short version is that he crashed his bike and broke his collarbone.  He had surgery last Thursday where they inserted a plate to repair the bone.  He’s bionic now, but laid up for the next few weeks.  Sounds like it’ll be about three months before he’s back to full strength, so I’ll be running on my own until probably May or June.

Random photos from my phone.

Pippen is now 1.5 years old.  Here he is at three months, when we first got home.  See how cute and teeny?

Here he is now.  Godzilla!  He barely fits in my lap anymore, and when he stretches out, he’s as long as my legs hereby proving that everyone’s taller than me.

Found a great new brewery in Marquette, Ore Dock Brewing Company. The place is pretty small, but the beer is really good.

We had a pretty good blizzard at the end of February that closed MTU for 1.5 days.  That was pretty significant because MTU does not close down frequently.  The last time was in 2007 and that one was on Josh’s birthday!  I forget how much snow that storm brought us, but it seemed like we were shoveling a couple of times a day for a week straight before we got a break.

I found the most enormous bottle of Sriracha I’ve ever seen in the hospital cafeteria.  That was about the only interesting thing I found there.  I might add that it also did not look like the cafeteria in Gray’s Anatomy, nor did any of the doctors look like McDreamy. Such a disappointment.

I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled weekly posts starting next week. Until then, think Spring! And don’t forget to turn your clocks back an hour tonight.

Happy snowy Sunday. We’ve been receiving a lot of fluffy lake effect snow today, which bodes well for our winter sports enthusiasts.  Yesterday, the temperature reached 45 degrees and my deck was completely bare.  Here it is this evening.  I’d say that’s about 10 inches.  We (meaning Josh) did snow twice today, but I did venture outside to  brush off my car and shovel the sidewalk and steps.  That’s our weather station on the pole.  We put it up earlier in the week and it’s been pretty interesting watching all the measurements.  We’re on Weather Underground and we have our own weather site, so check us out.

We had some good runs this week, partly due to the bare roads.  I’m not officially training yet, that doesn’t start for another couple of weeks, but I am trying to stick to 10-15 weekly miles to get good base.  Speaking of training, I was on the fence about whether I wanted to run a half or full in the Spring and I decided that I’m not ready to jump into marathon training just yet so I’m going to stick to the half. Anyway, we managed a little over 14 miles this week including one hill session that saw my heart rate peak at 190.  I didn’t puke or die but my legs were pretty sore the next day.

Gear review! ICESPIKE

Last winter, I switched from using Yaktrax to sheet metal screws for traction.  They worked pretty well, but I was hoping find something that would last the entire winter. Josh pointed me to ad he saw for ICESPIKE, essentially a sheet metal screw on steroids.  I did a bit of reading and decided to buy a set.  They were a bit pricey ($16.99 for 32 spikes and a couple of bucks for shipping), but since they advertised that I could potentially get 500 miles on them, I figured it’d be worth it.  I installed eight in each shoe and headed out for a run.  My first impression was that I could feel each screw through my shoe, even with a fairly thick insole.  That was a little strange at first, because I don’t remember feeling the sheet metal screws quite as much, but I figured I’d get used to them over time.  The spikes provided good traction on the hard-packed snowy roads and aside from being able to feel each screw which was mostly weird, they were fine on pavement as well.  When I got back home, I looked at the screws and I was disappointed to see that they showed quite a bit of wear.  My run was only 3.5 miles long and of that, probably about a half mile was pavement.  I decided to keep an eye on them after each run and note the wear.  As of today I have 23 miles on them and some of them are worn to the point of being completely flat and the rest aren’t far behind.  I contacted the company and they told me that they have sold thousands and thousands of sets and not one person has reported the same issue that I had.  I found that to be a bit condescending, but they did end up giving me a full refund, so there’s that. 

I think that if the wear wouldn’t have been so outrageous, I would have just kept them, but there was no way I was going to get 50 miles out of them, let alone the 500 that the company advertised.  I can buy a box of 100 sheet metal screws for $2.99 from the hardware store and get more wear out of them for a fraction of the cost($0.30 per shoe with sheet metal screws vs. $4.25 with ICESPIKEs).  I won’t go as far as to call them a gimmick, although that’s what Josh says they are, but I will say that based upon my experience they aren’t worth the money.  I’m sticking with my trusty sheet metal screws. Two thumbs down.

Happy New Year!  What the heck happened to 2012? Is it just me, or does it seem like the last year went by at an alarming rate? 

It’s been rather quiet on the running front. I took a two six week vacation from running and started back up again in the beginning of December.  Not a great idea as my little break left me huffing and puffing through runs that are at my usual easy pace.  Hrmph.  I’m starting to feel better after logging around 40 miles for December.  One of my runs was with Josh on Christmas day, we ran 4.5 miles through campus and downtown, which was obviously very quiet.  I stood in the middle of the main street and took a picture.

Then we ran hills and I almost had a heart attack and died.

2012 recap. The pinnacle of my year was that I made it through the entire running season without an injury.  That’s never happened before, so woohoo to that.  I did have a minor issue with my right foot in the beginning of the year which I thought was a stress fracture, but turned out to be a subluxated cuboid bone. A few sessions with my PT put the little rascal back in place and got me back on the road. I logged just over 600 miles and ran five races.

2012 by the numbers:

Goals for 2013. M-A-R-A-T-H-O-N.  I figure that it’s non-committal if I spell it out. Truthfully though, that distance scares the hell out of me, so I’m really hesitant to commit to anything.  My other goals for 2013 are eat less junk, exercise more, lose weight, bla bla bla same old same old.

Training starts in a couple of weeks, so here’s a picture of my cat’s booty to tide you over until then.