Running Chick

I salvaged a lackluster running week with a 6.5 miler this morning and then another 2.5 with Josh for a 9 mile day. It was nice and cool today, unlike earlier in the week.  I swear, I almost died on Monday when I ran down to the Nara Trail to meet Josh. It.Was.HOT. Once we hit the trail, it was cooler, but I was feeling the effects of that run for hours afterward. Yuck.  I ended up with just over 17 mile this week, which was pretty amazing since mostly all I did was sit around soaking up the a/c in my house. I hate to say this, but I am ready for this heat wave to be over.

Here’s the excitement that happened in the last week in RC world.

We worked at the Copperman Triathlon in Copper Harbor last Saturday. Our location was called “Fake Lake”, which I never knew existed until Saturday. Here’s a little video of our station by way of Josh and his new video camera thinger.

On the way back home, an obligatory stop at the Jampot for some goodies.

More narcissism from yours truly.

Great Sand Bay. Wow, there’s been a lot of work going on: stairs to the beach, official paved parking areas. When did this all happen? Clearly I need to get out more.

We stopped at an estate sale in Lake Linden and found that we’d parked next to an old Bosch Brewing Company building.

Then we came to a screeching halt by this old International truck which Josh said I needed to take a picture of.

The Cool Thing of the Week was a tie between this fancy new burr grinder that Josh got me. I think he got tired of hearing me bitch about my old Mr. Coffee grinder and not do anything about it. Note that my coffee now lives in a hopper. A hopper. Someone get the Intervention folks after me.

…and this fancy new bracelet that Josh also got me. It’s earthy and pretty, just how I like my jewels.

Dumb Thing of the Week is me having to write Josh’s c25k intervals on my arm because I simply cannot remember them no matter what. CRS, I has it.

WTF of the Week. At least it was really early so there wasn’t much traffic out to be killed by the falling load.

I'm Old Moment of the Week.

Most Visited Place of the Week Last Month. Nara Trail, three times a week in the last month. Josh is already planning on doing the Bridge to 10k after he finishes up the Couch to 5k, so we’ll be on this trail until the snow flies.

Yums of the Week. Salmon on the grill and sautéed mushrooms and Vidalia onions with thyme.

Booger of the Week

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.