[Let's Get Some] Shoes!

Happy Friday!

Let me begin with this slightly bizarre, incredibly funny, viral video. I'm guessing most of my readership as seen this before, but if you haven't seen it, or haven't seen it in awhile, then you're in for a TREAT!

(caution: if you have kids, you might want to ask them to leave the room. there's some language and it gets a little weird at the end)



BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Hilarious, and remarkably appropriate. I have 2 shoe stories to share with you today, so here we go. They're both very, very sad stories. But, at least one has a happy ending!

First, we have what happens when you know you need to buy new running shoes, but you put it off for a week:





Those blisters that got started on my 8-miler on Sunday? Yeah, they definitely got worse on my 6-miler on Wednesday. They were so bad that I was not able to even come close to finishing my hill workout yesterday. It was horrible. And they still hurt so bad! They're all bandaged up right now, and I'm sure glad that today is my day off from running, but I still need to go get some new shoes.

And all the ladies said, "YAY!!!!! Shoooooooooe Shopping!!!!" If I get out of work at a decent hour today, I'll stop by my our favorite local running store to grab a new pair (or, most likely two pairs! you can never have too many shoes and you get more life out of both pairs if you alternate between them). If I can't pick them up this afternoon, I'll just go to the NEX tomorrow before I go running.

So, that's the first sad shoe story of the week. Here's the next one:



Doesn't it just break your heart?! These shoes were such a great find! I picked them up at TJ Maxx in Riverdale, UT and wore them for the Groom's Dinner before Little Brother's wedding, as well as in the family photos taken by the talented Julie Parker. See?:


They were so wonderful. Who would want to destroy such a wonderful pair of shoes?

Behold! The perp:




THE LITTLE BEAST!!! I was sooo upset! This is what happened last Sunday. I came out of the shower and there he was, with my beautiful new shoes looking up at me like he was innocent, when in fact he was caught RED handed! I immediately called Teresa and lamented my sad tale to her. When I screamed "THE DAMN DOG ATE MY NEW SHOES!!!" the silly lady said "Which dog?" As IF my dear little Gwen would ever eat my shoes! She's a lady...she understands. Only a stinky boy dog would ever devour such a pretty pair of pink shoes :(

A Happy Ending To a Sad Story
When I came home from work yesterday, I had a box from FedEx on my doorstep. What an unexpected surprise! My dear MuM, while travelling for work in Boise, Idaho this week went to TJ Maxx up there and found a replacement pair! They are the exact same, and were still only $24.99 (LOVE a good buy!) and I was so thrilled that I promptly put them on a high shelf in my closet, away from sharp claws and gnashing teeth. See, a happy ending to a potentially very sade shoe tale.

Also in the amazing box of surprise love was this bit of utter fabulousness:


Oh yes, the '80s are back - epitomized by my new, beautiful, everything-old-is-new-again, white Ray-Bay Wayfarers! I mostly hate everything 80s that seem to be back en vogue again these days, but I have always loved the look of Wayfarers. Something about them is just so chic and summer and fun. And even though you can now get the classic shades in every single color imaginable, and are even customizable, I believe, I told my MuM that I wanted the white ones, just so they really embody that retro feel. I've even been listening to an 80s station on Pandora at work all day, just to go with my new glasses. Yeah, I'm lame like that.

So, the morals of today's stories are these: 1)don't wait too long to get new running shoes! 2)you can never have too many shoes (running shoes or otherwise!) and 3)my dear MuM is SUPER amazing. Thanks for the shoes and the glaases, mom!!!

The Non-Entry

Ok, ok, ok...I started writing this little blog about interval runs, but I really just am feeling lazy. I promise I'll put something together, but it will probably be this weekend when I have more time and don't feel like crap.

Ok, ok, ok...I don't really feel like crap, I just don't feel like writing. However, it's been a couple of days and I wanted to get caught up on my documentation of how everything is going. It will be brief:

Tuesday
I had one of the best track workouts ever. It was amazing, and I felt so self righteous when I was done. I'll share the details with you, just because it was so epic. I ran 6x800 with a 2:00 min. recovery time (and a 1 mile warm-up and cool-down). I was really nervous going into this workout, since I haven't been on the track in 2 weeks but, as it turned out, I guess the break was good for me. Here's my times:

1 - 3:24

2 - 3:28

3 - 3:28

4 - 3:29

5 - 3:25

6 - 3:26

When I compare that to my first track workout, where I only did 4x800 and wasn't able to run the last 2 at my target pace, it makes me feel like I'm actually getting somewhere with my training. Don't get me wrong - speed workouts suck and they hurt. I actually get nervous before I hit the track every week. I can feel my heart rate go up when I start thinking "I'm running too fast!" or "I'm running too slow!" it's crazy! Literally, I have to tell myself to calm down and take deep breaths. Then, after I have a great track day like I did this week, the next voice in my head says "pffft...3 miles at a 7:00 min. pace with a 2 minute break in between each 800? You used to run sub-21 5Ks all the time. You suck!" and then I have to call my MuM for a pep talk. Stupid track.

Wednesday
6 easy miles at about a 8:30 pace. I forgot to mention in the paragraph above that during my one mile warm-up on Tuesday, I recalibrated my Nike+iPod so hopefully it will start being a little more reliable. While my run yesterday was easy, there were some hilly parts and even though I had moleskin taped to my blisters with athletic tape, they still managed to run off and tear open. Ouch! The feet definitely hurt. I'll be buying new shoes this weekend. The thing with blisters is that they seem like such a little thing, but they can mess you up in all sorts of ways if they go untreated and you start favoring one foot over the other while you're running. Allignment gets all messed up and you put more strain on your joints and can do some real damage. Moral: take care of your feet! Have I mentioned that enough yet?

Thursday
Well, that's today and I haven't done any running yet. I plan on getting a good warm up in, running up a nasty hill 6-8 times, and then cooling down. I'm definitely looking forward to taking a day off tomorrow!

That's really all I have. Sorry this was so lame. I do have a picture here of Billy and I from last Halloween, which I think is pretty darn funny, so I'll post it, just so this blog isn't a complete waste of your time ;)

Hard Core

Oh, Gwen. Is there anything you can't do? Gwen Stefani abs is one of my goals during this whole training/diet adventure. Just take a look:







*Sigh* One day...one day.

Like many good things in life, a solid mid-section does not just magically appear one morning because you will it to be so. It takes a lot of work and discipline to achieve rock-hard ab status. Incidently, having a strong core (your core includes the muscles in your abdominals, lower back, and glutes) also greatly improves your ability to run quickly and efficiently.

I've been meaning for the past month to start incorporating a cross-training day into my workout regime. I'm supposed to be doing this anyway, as per the plan, but it just hasn't been happening. I'm determined, however, and from heretoforth, Monday will be my X-Training day. It's the ideal day for me to do something besides run, because it's right after my LSD Sunday and Tuesday Track Day (arguably the two most grueling workouts of the week). So yesterday, I gave it a whirl...

How It Went
First of all, I spent 30 minutes on some crazy eliptical/stairstepper contraption. I thought it was a normal eliptical machine when I hopped on, but then noticed that I had the option to not only increase the resistance, but the incline as well. I cranked both up and man, were my butt and calves feeling the burn! The great thing about those types of machines is that you can flip through a crappy edition of Shape magazine (one of the most pointless publications ever, in this girl's opinion) and it tells you at the end how many calories you burned. 360 for me yesterday in one half hour. Really? How does the machine know that? Does it know my height? My weight? My metabolic rate? Whatever. I did and then I moved on to...

...the Core Workout. I found this online (runnersworld.com of course. Where else do I go? You know me by now. You could actually probably stop reading this and just start trolling around at RW.com and get more, better information. But please don't!) It talks about how ridiculously important it is to have a strong core as a run as it increases your stability, power, and endurance. It then goes on to give you run-down of a 15-minute core exercise plan that should be integrated into your workout regime 3 times a week. You can see it here.

This is supposedly the core workout done by Olympic Hurdler Lolo Jones. Meet Lolo:


Another set of amazing abs and a rock solid core. But I tell you what, after doing that stupid core workout yesterday, I feel not even one iota closer to either Gwen or Lolo status. I know it was only one day, but I barely felt the burn while I was going through the routine. So, this week I'm going to spend some time doing some research to come up with some better core exercises that will not only be a perfect addition to my running workouts but will bring my closer to my dreams of Gwen Stefani abs.

Help a Girl Out
Please - if anyone out there has any brilliant core workouts, let me know. I hear yoga is good for that, but I've never even tried it and am a little bit skeptical for reasons I can't quite explain. I've also been told that P90X and Insanity and those types of workouts are great for your core, but I have yet to experiment with any of those. Comments? Suggestions? I only have 5 months so I need to get on it!

The Weekly Weigh-In & Other Goodness

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!!!!


I know what all you ladies out there are thinking. You're thinking, "Who's the stud?!" Well, simmer down ladies - that's my dad! Like I've mentioned before, I come from good stock. Dad was the man back in his glory days, and nothing has changed. He was just so fast! And even if he's not as fast as he once was, it doesn't matter because he is still just so amazing in so many ways. Dad has always been one of my biggest fans (probably THE biggest fan, tied for first with MuM) - I can't think of a race or meet that one of my parents wasn't at. I know I'm blessed to have parents that care. I love you, DadE!

The Weigh-In
Right, sooo...after a month of running, "dieting", and obsessing, this girl has lost...1 lb. *sigh* 144 said the scale this a.m. I blame the trip to Utah!! That's my story and I'm sticking to it. This next month will be better. I don't have anything going on until the end of July. It will be fine. I'm not going to get too hung up on it because...

LSD Sunday
After yesterday's erroneous reading on the Nike+, it came through for me today! I ran an 8-miler (I stepped it down due to my debauchery last week, but will kick it back up next weekend and most of the subsequent weekends) and I averaged 8:08. I was super excited, and I even Google Mapped my route, so I knew that Nike+ wasn't just flattering me and trying to apologize for yesterday. My total time was 1:05:10 and I felt great the whole time. According to Nike+, my last 4 miles were faster than my first 4. All of these things are wonderful and made me feel good about running and my ability again. But, all the sunshine and rainbows came with a price:




I don't know how well you can see that, but those are my feet with HUGE blisters on both my left and right arches. OH! The agony of da feet! (bahahahahaha! I love a good pun!) They hurt like a son of a gun and make me unhappy. So, as mentioned earlier, I took care of my feet:

I gave them an exfoliating sand scrub:


Then, a soothing salt water soak:


All from the comfort of my backyard:


It's true. Where I live is nothing less than B.A. When are you coming to visit?

In Conclusion...
This past week I've spent just trying to get myself back to where I was before I took a week off to drink too much champagne, so I deviated quite a bit from the plan, but I feel like I'm back to where I can pick it back up again. I'll continue to share my progess with you as the week progresses.It seems like I had so much more to chat about today, but I think I've covered just about everything, so I'll leave it at that.

I hope you all have had a lovely weekend and great Father's Day. Here's a parting shot of my running buddies to make you smile and wrap up the week:

Erroneous!

Happy Weekend to you all! I slept for ages last night and it felt glorious! When I finally did roll out of bed and get a cuppa coffee in me, I decided to re-create on of my favorite runs from a couple of weeks ago. I start out by taking the dogs with me on a lovely 3.3 mile loop that brings us back to the house. Once I'm there, I tie up the dogs and make sure they have water, and then run 2 more miles (as per my precious) at a faster, dog-free pace.

Well, I don't know what happened today, but it was not good. The last time I did this, my last 2 miles were at a 7:41 pace. Today, it was more like a 9:01 pace. Now, usually I can accept when I'm having a bad day, but I didn't feel like I was running that slow! Especially since I was running at about a 8:30 pace when I was with the dogs, and stopping for them to do their business, and untangling them, and pulling them around.

To better illustrate my plight, I took screen shots of my workouts from the Nike+ website where I uploaded them to.

Exhibit A:


Exhibit B:


Ok, ok...now apart from my really, really poor ability to keep a steady pace, I just don't think that I ran slower during the 2nd run. GAHHHH!! The really, really depressing thing is that I have no reason to believe my precious is wrong. :(

What an upsetting thing! I will recalibrate the Nike+ sensor this week just to be sure, but I'm afraid I'm just still paying the price for all my fun last week. Serves me right! (But I still don't think I was running that slow! And I'm sticking to that!)

A Few of My (Least) Favorite Things

I'm going to keep this short, sweet, and to the point. Because I'm grouchy today, here are some things that I hate:

1) Stretching. I generally just don't do it. I think during the first week of this little experiment I stretched but, now that I've more or less found my stride again, I'm back to not stretching. Stretching sucks because it hurts, and that's all there is to it. It's not even the kind of hurt that helps you in the long run - like track workouts or hills. Oh, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "But it prevents injuries, Ash!" Phooey. I've never really stretched, and aside from my janky ankles, I've never had a real running injury. So there.

2) How long it takes to recover from a week of too much fun. Alright, alright...I know it was my fault for all the champagne I drank and deliciousness I consumed while I was away, but really? Come on, body o' mine...you have been training for this thing for a month, there has to be some residual fitness in there somewhere. Nope, according to my failed attempt at 5 miles yesterday, there is not. It takes soooo long to get your body to be able to perform at a certain lever, but it takes no time at all to fall right back to square one. Stupid body.

3) Vacuuming. It's loud, you have to move everything around, the edges of the rugs always get sucked up, the dogs freak out...there is nothing good about vacuuming except making your floors clean. Billy was the vacuumer in the house, because I refused. Now I have the horrible job. One more reason to dislike deployment.

4) The way my tummy feels right now because I ate pizza for lunch and am trying to convince myself to go for a lengthy run. Again, body fail. And resolve fail. It's a dark day for Operation: Sexy Bitch.

5) Flossing. I hate flossing for all the same reasons I hate stretching. I've had dentists thank me for flossing so regularly, when I never, ever, ever do. So that tells me it's pointless to floss. Besides, flossing hurts (because, like stretching, I never do it) so I see no reason to inflict more pain upon myself. I do that enough with this training.

6) The fact that it's not Friday yet.

That's all I can think of right now. I'm sure there's more to whine about, but I'm starting to hate the fact that I'm being such a whiner! Makses sense, right? Anyway, if any of you out there have something you'd like to go ahead and bitch about, feel free to do so here. It just seems like it's one of those days all the way around.

***I promise that tomorrow I'll start talking about running again!***

You Can't Run Without Feet

So take care of them! So, so many runners' injuries come from the ankle down: plantar fascitis, sesamoiditis, blisters, calluses, turf toe, lost toenails...the list goes on and on.

{those grievances listed with links are to pages that have tips for preventing/relieving those particular ailments}

For the past weekish, I've taken a little hiatus from the marathon training. Detrimental though my little break my have been (I'm dreading weighing in at the end of this week, and I certainly couldn't bear to go to my Tuesday Track workout yesterday), it was good for my soul. I spent Wednesday night through Monday afternoon surrounded by family, friends, love, bubbly, good food, great wine, smiles, and not much else! Sometimes it's good to work out your heart in other ways besides just cardiovascularly :)

One thing I did get accomplished while in the Blessed State, however, is a time-honored tradition that my MuM and I have been engaging in since I was in high school: the mani-pedi!



Before the Beautiful Suzy hitched her wagon to my dear Little Brother, all of us gals went to go get our toes pampered (and hands too, for some of us). This is Suzy and Grandma Jane during their turns in the magic seat:



Now, of course pedicures make you feel pretty, which we all know by now can be a very important part of running, but the reasons for runners (female and male) to get pedicures go beyond the purely cosmetic. A good pedicurist will keep your toe nails trim (tre important for runners), take care of calluses that can cause discomfort, moisturize dry, craked tootsies, and give you the essential foot massage (I say essential because they do wonders for your feet; and runners definitely need to pamper their feet after all the pounding we put on them.

Here are some great articles I have found on the care the runner's foot and injury prevention:

Care For Your Feet

Surface Tension

Too Much Good Stuff

No Air up There!
I did go for one mountain run with my beatiful MuM on Monday before I had to head back to this rock. As predicted, she totally kicked my butt and I was sucking air - except there wasn't any at 5,000 feet! It's no big deal, though. I was happy to get taught a thing or two by one of my biggest running role models. To wrap it up, here's a picture of me and my beauftiful MuM at the pedicure place. Isn't she great?