New Shoes!

After work, I usually endure a 40-minute commute to where my husband works in Scottsdale to pick him up before we start to head home for the evening. When I was about 5 minutes away from his building, I suddenly remembered that I had left my running shoes at work. I used to have an old spare that I used in case of emergencies at home but somewhere in the last year, I misplaced them. I hit the steering wheel and yelled out, "Dammit!" (my favorite curse word. haha)

It was too late to go back to my office building. So I thought that it was about time to head over to my favorite running shoe store in Tempe to get some new shoes. I had a coupon from my participation in the Lost Dutchman 10k on my bib that imparted me to a discount of $20 off any Asics brand shoe.

I'm a big Athena girl and the best shoes for me have been Brooks and Asics.

So the hubby went home to get my coupon and left for the shop. I didn't want to get a motion control shoe because my Brooks felt like they took forever to break in. The sales girl allowed me to try on several stability shoes but I felt that they didn't have enough cushion in the heel which is kinda a big thing for me at the moment from all the excess weight I have pounding on my poor feet.

In the end, I selected the motion control shoe from Asics...the Foundation 7.

It's a lot like the first pair of Asics running shoes I ever owned. They were the best I ever owned and I was very sad to have to retire them back in '06.

These shoes are solely for 3-6 mile runs. I'm trying to extend the life of my Brooks Ariels - the shoes I'll be wearing to run the San Diego marathon.

Sometimes I find it funny that I can be so miserly when it comes to buying new shoes for work or casual wear. $40-50 seems like so much for a pair of heels or loafers but I can shell out close to $100 for a pair of running shoes at the drop of a dime. hehe Priorities!

I may have to return my new shoes and exchange them for a wider size though. Maybe tomorrow.

A Happy Tuesday Morning

Whenever you visit a grocery store or trading post on the Navajo rez, you are bound to see a huge section just dedicated to the meat product, Spam. Navajos love their Spam! It's the best when diced into cubes and cooked with sliced potatoes. It's the ultimate when this perfection of a meal is rolled in a Navajo tortilla to make a "spam and potato burrito". Yum!

I tried to find a picture on the net but no luck. This morning, my friend and co-worker made some of these delightful treats for a group of us here at work. She mixed in a little jalopeno bits to make it even more awesome.

So I didn't do any form of exercise yesterday. I take Mondays seriously as recovery days. I was psyched to find out that I wasn't very sore all day after a 10-miler. Usually, I am wincing as I walk up and down the stairs at work. It must have been the cold shower I took after the run and the stretching I did during the runs and afterwards that really helped.

It's warming up here in Phoenix so I must do away with my sweats. Hopefully after work today I can head to a running store to buy some new running attire. Yay!

Marathon Training Milestone

Today, I officially got to the point in my marathon training where I think, "What the &@$! am I getting myself into?!" To run 26.2 miles in one attempt is completely absurd! I haven’t thought this way since I did a 30k more than a year ago.

This morning I set out to do 10 miles. The first thing I did wrong was starting off later than usual. I forgot to set my alarm for 6am and therefore, slept in until 7am. I checked myspace and did some other time wasting activities before I started to fuel up with cereal and yogurt. I scurried around the house for nearly 20 minutes getting together all of my essentials: Garmin, iShuffle, Fuel Belt w/filled water bottles, sunblock lotion, socks, cap, etc.

By the time I was out the door, it was already nearly 9am. I had to make a quick pit-stop at Safeway to get some Gatorade and a bagel. Got to Tempe Town Lake just after 9am and put on all of my essentials like a Gladiator going to war.

I knew this run was going to be challenging because I could feel the warmth but luckily there was a breeze and it was enough for me not to dart back to my car and go home.

The first 3 miles were easy because I employed the Galloway method. After 4.5 miles, I could start to really feel the sun taunting me. I looked at my arms and they had darkened considerably. I thought about finishing up and then doing the remaining miles that evening but continued because I need to train my body to do all the miles at once. I worried because I didn’t have enough water in my bottles but thought that I could make it to the next water fountain by the time I downed all the water.

The last 4 miles were killers and I had to take longer walking breaks to prevent overheating. I took a long break under the Mill Ave. bridge when I was just shy of 8 miles. I lingered there for about five minutes - stretching, drinking water from the fountain, and filling up my water bottles. Starting back up with a mutha!

Somehow I made it through.

My body seems to hate me right now for it refuses to walk. Little does it know that next Sunday calls for 12. (evil laugh)

Get With It! But so Tired

This was basically how I was feeling this week. I didn't do so hot racking up the miles. I'm even embarrassed to put the numbers up here.

It was a relatively tame week in comparison to the past two weeks I've been out of the office and jet-setting about. On Wednesday and Thursday, I took a short trip to Whiteriver, Arizona - on the White Mountain Apache reservation. It was simply beautiful out there! Great hiking and camping country.

Anyway, I was trying to make myself put in some miles on Thursday and on Friday evening but my body was still tired from all the traveling. It felt like I wasn't fully recovered from ALL of the traveling because my body never really got a rest on the weekends. The weekends were always full of long running. I think I need something like a massage to get the effects of full relaxation or something.

Anyhow, I am about to put in a 4-mile run this morning on the treadmill.

I need to commit.

I will be starting a hard copy of my running journals. I think I feel more rewarded when I right down things on paper with pen. BUT, today - hopefully new shoes!

Hooray for Galloway!

Ok, so I didn't keep good on my word to keep y'all updated on my adventures.

I lived the life of a roaming inspector for 4 days. Lots of driving and bumpy roads. Lots of sun. Lots of eating gas station crap you shouldn't be eating. By the end of the week, you can guess that I was tired!

While I was in Window Rock, I worked out two or three days at the Wellness Center. I applied for membership there last year and never picked up my card so I stopped by on Monday to see if my card was still on file. The guy who helped me took out this huge log of a box stuffed with unclaimed cards. I gave him my last name and he scoured the 'C' section 3 times before declaring there was nothing.

He asked me about four times if I was sure I signed up at that particular branch.

Finally, we went to the computer and he did a query of my full name. Nothing came up. I was pretty sure that I signed up and did remember having issues once with my registered name but couldn't remember what the issue was. So I tell him to do a query of just my first name and voila! my name shows up.

Turns out I forgot that I registered with my husband's last name. haha I'm just so used to my maiden name and even now I consider the thought of never changing my last name since I'm going back to grad school and have dreams of a PhD someday. I've worked too hard to change it now.

Anyway, I kept the mileage low last week since I had a nagging pain on the innerside of my left calf. It's not necessarily a shin splint since it's not near the middle or outside of the calf. I don't know what it is but I think I may have to get some new shoes soon.

Yesterday, I employed the Galloway method when doing my long run because I wanted to make sure I was treating the leg nicely. I even walked a whole mile for my warm-up. I ran about 3:45 - 4:00 minutes and followed with walking for 1:00 min. I was surprised at how energetic I was still feeling after five miles and I was only adding 10-15 seconds to my projected marathon pace of 12:00 minutes. Near the end, I ran a full mile non-stop from the 5 to 6 mile interval at 10:59 pace. Nice! I felt I needed to push my body a bit near the end so it could start adjusting to fatigue.

I ended my loop at Tempe Town Lake with 7.3 miles under my belt.

This run was my relax break according to my marathon training schedule. Next week the long run is slated for 10 miles. Oh boy, it's been awhile since I've covered such a distance.

Hope all is well.

checking in.

hello running friends,

my life has been very busy lately. i was in DC on business all of last week and sadly, did not get any running in. shame, such a wonderful place to run.

i'm leaving in a bit for my old haunt - window rock, arizona. i'll be doing some field inspections with some folks from the pesticide program there at navajo. out again for the whole week but am aiming to get my miles in.

i did the valley of the sun 1/2 marathon relay this morning. i'm still damning this one hill because it jacked my left calf a little but it's fine now. a friend and i split 2 legs between us. I did the 6.9 mile portion and finished out 2.1 miles when i got home on the treadmill for a total of 9 miles.

i'll try to keep in touch.
hope all is well.

have a fantastic week.

Managing to Get Back on Track

I'm up at 2 in the morning. I awoke around 1 am from a bad dream (dreamed that I was stuck with owning a haunted house that was haunted by a 5 year old girl and it was my first night sleeping in the house!).

I decided to log onto the net to kill some time until I felt sleepy again. Checked myspace. Checked email. Caught up with some running blogs. By the way, the theme of the moment for most bloggers is FOOD! Makes it all the difficult to keep my weight in check! haha And finally decided to change up my blog's header.

My husband put all of my old running photos on a different hard drive and I don't know how to access them so I decided to work with a photo of my current running shoes that I took when I was waiting for my hotel shuttle to pull up at Portland International last fall. It adds something "official" to my blog. :)

I also wanted to log that I had run on Sunday evening.

I put in a short 3.1 miles as I knew that if I churned out anymore miles, I'd likely be really sore the next day. This was my first run since the 10k last Sunday. A whole week! Not good. I've been trying to get my garmin to locate satellites but it's not faring successful indoors. I don't want to go outside right now for fear of waking up the hubby. Guess I'll post my exact times later tomorrow. I do remember my mile splits though.

1 mile - 11:08
2 mile - 11:28
3 mile - 11:23

3.1 miles = 35:03

I realized I ran the first mile a little too fast so I tried to slow it down for the following miles. Still got a ways to go to get back to a 30 minute 5k. *sigh* But I know slow and steady wins the race!

I wanted to run last night (Monday) but I fell asleep while reading a book. I've been refreshing on my environmental science knowledge. Over the weekend, I got my butt in gear about the dreaded graduate school application process. I'm applying this coming winter. For most of this coming year, I will be married to my GRE study books. At least I have running to keep my sanity in check!

I'm going to go for a walk in the morning when I get up to warm up my sore muscles and do some stretching. I hope this alleviates some of the soreness. Tonight, I have a tentative dinner date with my two relay runners. We're going to iron out some of the race day details. Should be fun!