Red Randoms

Today, my brain doesn't really process full thoughts, so you get a numbered list instead...

1. Due to the ice (see above), I tried to go do the 3 miles for Tuesday on a treadmill. 
2. The gym was packed to a level I have literally never seen. All machines had someone on them.
3. Instead of waiting around for someone to hopefully yield after their 30 minutes, I came home and tried our tv's "fitness on demand." 
4. The first lady had  "Madonna arms."
5. The second lady was entertaining and had way less distracting arms.
6. Somehow, pilates and yoga have made my arms, especially triceps, hurt. A lot.
7. I scoped out the sidewalks today on my drive home from work. The 3 mile route sidewalks were clear. The 2.4 mile sidewalks? Not so much. BEHOLD A SIGN FROM THE RUNNING GODS!!!
8. So I did my 3 miles. After the first half mile, my legs literally kicked into gear. They knew the hill was done, and it was all pretty much level from then on. Good little legs :)
9. My mom got me a Cookout t-shirt for Christmas. I forgive you if you've never eaten there because you either live out of their area or you don't want to swell up thanks to their burgers, shakes, chicken nuggets and onion rings. By the way, you can get one of each of those for under $6. 
10. There's a Cookout in walking distance from my work...doom doom!
11. Anyway, the point of the Cookout story is that I wore it today on my run :)
12. As you can see below, its bright red!
13. By mile 1, my arms were the same color. 
14. There was lots of wind today! It was a headwind on the way out and a tail wind on the way back. 
15. I got so used to breathing in to the wind that when I turned around, I had to re-figure out how to breathe.
16. I get post-run cough these days. My mom got to hear the full effect of it during our Sunday talk this weekend and I fear she will hear it tonight during our Wednesday talk.
17. We only talk Sunday/Wednesdays, I swear. Usually. Unless something great/bad/cooking happens :)
18. No clue how long the 3 miles took. Loving the arm band. Fred does good :)
19. By the way, Fred got rear-ended today. Thankfully, not his fault, but the poor boy is hurting. Haven't seen the car yet but Fred's descriptions sound slightly foreboding...
20. Large scary man was "walking" 2 dogs and by "walking" I mean "getting pulled by" and so I waited til there was a break in the busy 4 lane divided highway to step on the blacktop, off the sidewalk, to pass the stopped man and leering dogs. Large scary man then yelled "hey! get off the road!" at my back....seriously, dude?!
21. I feel a little hardcore running in sub-30* weather.
22. Unfortunately, this weather makes me twitch a lot. My muscles get unusually tense or loose these days. Nothing feels weird when I run, but when I stop and the next few hours after, things feel a bit off. Still running, just cautiously.

Woo Cookout shirt :)

I wanted this to show that my arms matched my shirt. They did...but then I cooled down a bit :/

 Here's to the next TV timeout :)

-Syd

Go fast!

This will be short because I think my eyes are rebelling from so much screen time- laptop, work screen and Droid :) This totally falls into this category : http://whitewhine.tumblr.com/

Today's scheduled run was 2 miles, "fast". I came up with a 1 mile route that left from work and planned to do an out and back- until I went on the route. My work is really close to NC State's campus, technically part of it, but its on a way far side of campus, surrounded by houses, churches, mosques, apartments and random little businesses. Also, I decided to use the fancy new iPod armband Fred got me for Christmas- and yes, we finally did our "Christmas" this Tuesday :P Since I was rocking out to the tunes, I wanted to see if I could push myself without GPS in my ears. 

As I went out however... I had sidewalks that were more like this --> \ / than this --> _ _ _ .... Even better? I passed a work crew half on the sidewalk, half on the street, and all eyes on me :$ The street I turned on next routed me under a semi-creepy bridge, made even more creepy by people actually hanging out under it! 

Highly creeped out, I turned down a street earlier than I'd planned and didn't just turn around. I knew this route would pass me by the police station and my NEW JOB :) Its part time, but its cool research that's super useful and gives me some interesting and varied experience. Oh, and plenty of time to finish writing... and run ;)

I looked at the timer I'd started on the iPod to guess how far I'd been running. At the 16 minute (and "crap, running up that hill was hard") point, I knew I hadn't been running *that* fast, so I took my 30 second pout and finished the run. Did I mention there were a few ups and downs in this spastic route??

The end result was 1.7 miles in 18 minutes, a 10.6 minute pace. Not as fast as my fluke run, but weirder route on the 3rd straight leg-cardio day. Definitely doing weights tomorrow, probably arm stuff and yoga :)

Here's to the next TV timeout!

-Syd

Icky weather

Today was one of those days where there were lots of "shoulds"- I should go to church, I should wake up from my post-church/lunch nap, and of course, I should go for a run. I went to work dressed up for church, and oh the comments that garnered and so I did go to church- I would've gone without the comments. However, being the only person in dress pants in a greenhouse, moving around plants for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning when your co-workers and even boss are in jeans or pj's makes you stand out. Juuusssst a bit ;) Oh well! My handsome reward was a full choir to sing along with the Christmas songs!

Post church/lunch, I started falling asleep while checking up on stuff. I gave in and napped for a nice 2 hours. Mmm. But getting up with weather that was icky and rainy was not a way to motivate myself. However, new clothes? ALWAYS WORK! I put on my running tights, even though it was probably 50 outside, hat to hide the hair that had gotten smushed in the nap, and figured out my route.

The snow is all melted, so I conquered the evil hill from the last run first, ran the majority of my time on relatively flat sidewalks, then had a nice 1/2 mile hill down to end my 2.44 miles. My awesome new Android has an app called My Tracks and I set it to tell me my distance, time elapsed and pace, every 2 minutes. My goal was to keep around an 11 min mile pace. Yes, its slow, but my first race 2 months ago was 12 min miles, so I'm improving :) Oh, and running, not walking, the hills ;)

Why yes, you are indeed the route I ran today and exported to google maps!

 To make things even more cool, the app exported the data, both the route to google maps, and the pace/distance/etc info to google docs. Muwahahaha! I'm using the runner's day-by-day log my mom got me for Christmas and they mesh well together :)

My goal for the month is 15 run days, 10 weight/strength training days. Making the double batch of risotto I had for dinner last night doesn't count for strength training by any chance, does it?! Also, I get to keep track of how many miles I run, which I sort of do here, but if you asked me off the top of my head how much I run, only now can I say "well, this week it was 7.5 miles, but I'm hoping to keep increasing my mileage, but no more than 10% per week." <-- true story :)

Here's to the next TV timeout!

-Syd