Minneapolis

The best way to see a new city? On your two feet going 6 mph. I was lucky enough to do that while in Hilton Head, SC and I was lucky enough to do it again tonight up in Minneapolis.

I even skipped the last session in order to get my run in before a friend picked me up for dinner at 7:30p. And it was a glorious, but hot, run around the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Apparently, around the river was a lot of flour mills.

Pillsbury's Best Flour Mill

Gold Medal Flour Mill

I was able to hit up some streets until I got to the river and then it was all trail. I even managed to go off into a forest like area going down to the river. But unfortunately, both ways led to a dead end so I had to go back up. They have a road called Nicollete Mall which has a lot of stores and shops on it. Wide sidewalks and a speed limit of 10 mph so it was fun to run down that road at the end.

On a side note, since the race that Luke & I met at one year ago did not happen, I wanted to go for a 5k run anyway. We did that on Sunday before I left to come up to Minneapolis. We ran together, it was so nice. And then I gave him a card. Well, actually I left the card in his car but told him about it. He asked if he should feel bad for not getting me anything. But I'm more the romantic than he is. He's learning I hope. Anyway, later on that night as we talked from my hotel room in Minneapolis, he said that my card brought a tear to his eye. Awwwww.

Now back to running. For those of you that have a Garmin 405, keep in mind that it will fill up. For the last few runs & the 46 mile bike ride I did a few weekends ago, it has been telling me that the lap database is almost full and I need to delete older ones. So I have 981.66 miles and a time of 144:14:59 on my Garmin.

Since not having a race to prepare for, no 5k, no 10k, no marathon, I haven't been doing as much running. Which is a bit disappointing. I had hoped to still run even without a race in mind. I would have to find a Winter marathon if I want to run another one this year. I get back from India the Friday before Labour Day and I do not plan on doing any running in India at all. Feel temp of 100 degree heat? No thank you. But 16 weeks is a middle of December marathon. It'll have to be some place in the south that's for sure. So we'll see what I'm gonna do.

Activity Route: -- Elev. Avg: 817 ft Location: Minneapolis, MN Elev. Gain: +0 ft Date: 07/26/10 Up/Downhill: [+498/-498] Time: 05:53 PM Difficulty: 2.8 / 5.0 Performance Distance: 5.01 miles Time: 0:56:06 Speed: 5.4 mph Pace: 11' 12 /mi Calories: 528 Map Elevation (ft) Pace (min/mile) Splits Mile Pace (min/mile) Speed (mph) Elevation Gain actual +/- avg actual +/- avg 1 8' 00 -3' 12 7.5 +2.1 -13 ft 2 10' 06 -1' 06 5.9 +0.6 -16 ft 3 12' 02 +0' 50 5.0 -0.4 -69 ft 4 12' 04 +0' 52 5.0 -0.4 +49 ft 5 12' 11 +0' 59 4.9 -0.4 +50 ft end 8' 05 -3' 07 7.4 +2.1 0 ft Versus average of 11' 12 min/mile

Posted from bimactive.com

Categories: garmin, Luke, Minneapolis

A little bit of everything

I stopped Shredding. I decided that after doing 2 days of butt kicks and then hearing my right knee cracking and popping while doing them, that's not a good thing. As kilax said they would, my quads started to hurt after the 2nd day. I didn't do it on Wednesday morning since I knew I had the 7 mile run scheduled. And I decided this morning (while struggling to get out of bed) that I'll start it after my marathon on the 19th.

I'm thinking of getting one of these for my first marathon.
My medals are hanging around the spare bedroom closet doorknob, next to the cat litter boxes. Not exactly in a spot worthy of medals. I'm thinking of getting this one, to hang on the wall, to show off my first marathon. Not that the time is great or that it's a good photo (my thigh fat is doing a weird wiggle thing), but just to have it hanging on my wall. What do you guys think? Good idea or waste of money?

I'm buying a lot of random things for my Garmin & bike. Cool stuff. Stuff that I don't need. Like a carrying case for my Garmin. And a seat pack for my bike. I did buy 2 white water bottle cages that I did need. But I also bought a blue cycling computer for way too much money when I could have bought a cheap generic one. I'm looking at a Forerunner Bicycle Mount Kit. But I'm not sure I would need that when I could just wear it right?? Gotta get new gloves too. Since I have white handlebars and my gloves are black, I know that they're gonna rub off and leave black marks.

Oh did you see that 2 new versions of Garmin Forerunner were released? (Yes, that's ME talked about in the article!!!!) One that will do heart-rate calorie count (remember when I thought mine would do that??) and the other that is water resistant for those triathletes out there (tempting!!). The 405CX comes in a pretty blue colour too! But it automatically comes with a heart-rate monitor so the price is a lot more than what I paid. Oh and it also comes with options for different wristbands for smaller wrists! How heavenly would that be?!
I also bought a Road ID. Well, a replacement for my current one. I put the same numbers on it; Dad (who changed his number), Brother (who also changed his number) and Work (which also changed) since the last one I bought. I changed my Motto tagline too. Last one was "Keep On Keeping On!" Which I thought was pretty neat. This time I put on "Run & Win Your Own Race." Talk about motivation and keeping it real. If you would like to buy a Road ID, here's a $1 off coupon: ThanksLindsay473840. Can be used 20 times in the next 30 days.

So Target, Wal*Mart, MC Sports, even Chilton's Sporting Goods (a local hometown store) all didn't carry my Clif Shot Bloks. I will be heading to Rockford tomorrow after work then. And will be buying many packages. They only carry the Black Cherry & Cran-Raz (which I tried and couldn't handle the taste. I also have some Cranberry Raspberry juice but don't like it.) Maybe they'll have some other flavours.

Categories: garmin, running accessories, Shred, St. Jude Marathon

ANGER!!!

Can I have a redo on this day?

First, I get up around 7:30a and dressed for a treadmill run at the YMCA. Shorts, tank, new shoes, heart rate, jogging pants, zip up fleece, and my jacket. Leave around 8:10a and I go outside to drive across the street to the Y. Yes, I live within in a 6 minute walk to the Y but when it's -2 outside, I'd rather not. And I'm glad I did for as soon as I went outside the first breath I took hurt my lungs and my nose hairs froze. But I get to my car. And it doesn't start. *sigh* Not again. It happened last week and weekend when the first deep freeze came on through.

So instead of just giving up, I go back upstairs to put on another pair of shoes, grab my fleece headband and neck gaiter and decide to trek my way across to the YMCA. I finally make it over there and walk to the Workout Center. I tell the guy my situation and it looks like the treadmills are not that busy about 6 are free. He says that's fine, it shouldn't be a problem. So I pick one out, still sign up for the 30 minute but he knows that I want to go for longer. I take off my pants, change out my shoes (I didn't want to walk through any snow with my new shoes) and I finally get going around 9a. But I was frozen to the core.

It starts filling up around that time too. I worry a little but since I know that I have my treadmill until 9:30a no biggie. I finally get in the zone in the last few minutes of that 30 minutes. I notice this kid jumps on the treadmill next to me. His friend is waiting behind him. I don't really give it too much thought though. Then this YMCA lady Nazi comes over to me saying that someone signed up for this treadmill after me. I tell her (mind you while still running) that can't they run on one of the other 5 treadmills open? She said his friend running on that one (points to the one where the kid running) and he signed up for this one. I told her that I'm in the middle of my long run and I cleared it with the guy behind the desk. She said that "today is his first day and he didn't understand the way the sign up worked. You can only sign up for 30 minutes." I asked "can't he use the open one on the other side?" She said "no, he wants this one and your time is up. You can get off and use another treadmill and sign up for another 30 minutes."

Mind you, I'm really really angry at this time. I just finally got in the zone, comfortable with doing 6 miles on a treadmill and then this happens. So I stop the treadmill and start to grab my items and the lady comes back to me saying that the treadmill on the other side is open and he said he can run on that. I just looked at her and said "I just stopped my treadmill, I can't get those miles back now!" She said Thank you. And I just wanted to scream!!!!! I go over to the sign up sheet, pick another treadmill and sign up for 30 minutes.

I go over to pick up my items and saw the kid was already setting up his speed. I asked if he saw the mileage on it. He stuttered and said "Um, no, no." Grrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!! I think it was 32 minutes and I was running at 9:40 min/mi so I can figure it out on Runner's World. (32:34 min @ 9:40 min/mi = 3.37 mi)

I got to my treadmill but I already lost my rhythm. It's the first row so there's that. This treadmill seems lower or I seem higher above it. Then it's crooked so I wasn't lined up with the folks in front of me and it totally threw off my kilter. I just wasn't feeling it anymore. I was still fine till about the last few minutes then my heart rate started to sky rocket. I knew that was because my body started to not like this distance. So at 30 minutes, I stopped which was 3.11 miles.

Total of 6.48 miles for the day. I think. I have no idea since my run got interrupted! I was not about to go outside and run at a -2. I pushed my heart rate monitor up too high thinking that it was falling and it needed to be higher on my chest so at one point the number was really low. Then I lowered it when I saw the 60's and I pushed it down a bit and it started going right up! I was keeping around the 170's except at the end when it went to the 180's.

But I think next week, if this keeps up, I'm gonna to go over earlier. It was easy to get out of bed when I knew that people were waiting. But when I know that I'm going to do a treadmill run and it would be there all day, I had no rush to get out of bed. Stupid mind.

And if this weather keeps up, I'm gonna have either a personal worst in the marathon run OR go from the marathon to just the half marathon. I'm never doing a Spring marathon again. Have I said that before? :-)

Ohhh and I also found out why my Garmin is not telling me my calorie count when using the heart rate. It's because Garmin does their calorie count by speed and/or elevation and not by heart rate. This is the web page that I read told me this. Makes sense now.

Now since I didn't eat anything this morning before my run, I'm going to eat a bagel and take a shower and then just chill out in my apartment all day long. Maybe tomorrow my car will start. I want Pie!!

Oh but my shoes were good! The red part of the bottom makes it really smushy and soft. So I liked that. However, I think I put on my left shoe wrong because my toes kept going to sleep on me. So I have to adjust the shoe laces. But otherwise, I like them. We'll see how it goes once I get in the double digits. Whenever that might happen.

Categories: cold weather, garmin, heart rate, shoelaces, treadmill runs, YMCA

Running

Brent and I has had this joke going on since we first got together. Kinda odd really. But a month after we started dating, he went off to New Zealand. He said, you better not get together with Paco. Why a Mexican name, not sure. His hookup girls name ended up being Jasmine. And now that he's moved away, we still play with that.

Anyway, so I ran tonight with my new Garmin (more on that later) and when I FINALLY got it synced with my computer (in the settings of the watch the pairing was turned off so it wasn't being recognised) it asked me to name my Garmin. I'm not very genius when it comes to that. So I called up Brent. He named his iPod, FlyPod. My iPod? Lindsay's iPod. Like I said, not a genius. But he didn't have a clue. So I got mad at him, a little, and said that I'm going to get off the phone so I can figure this out. He didn't want to let me go because I was mad. I was just going to name it Lindsay's Garmin or something. But then I thought of the little story up top and using Paco but decided nah, that needs to stay in that story. I always said when I was single that Running is my Boyfriend. So then I thought about naming him Brent. But what if Brent and I split? So then, I thought of the podcast that I listen to, Pheidippidations and decided to shorten it to Phil. Phil is named for Pheidippides, who was the runner that announced the victory of the Greek in the Battle of Marathon. After he ran the distance 150 miles in 2 days and then the 26 miles from the city of Marathon to Athens, he shouted "We have won!" and then died. The 385 yards (.2) came from the British family who wanted to see the start of the race from their castle so they moved the starting line to accommodate her request, or so the stories go.

OK, so now to the running. It was great. I didn't even notice it acquiring the satellite. All I had to do was set it up for training, then hit the button for start and started running. Then when I was done, the same button again to stop. I didn't notice the Virtual Partner until after I was done. So I haven't played with that yet. I was able to see my time, my pace and the distance all very clear. It seemed very accurate with what my last Nike+ (the one that was calibrated right) which is good to know. The pace was off very much though. At times it said I was doing a 10:54 pace. I can change that from Pace to Speed which would show me what speed I was going. So I thought I was running prety slow but once I stopped it, it said I was going at a 9 minute pace. Well, damn. I didn't know that. The GPS did feel kinda heavy on my arm, especially toward the end. When I was done with the 7 miles, my left arm just felt weird. I had the GPS and my iPod on my upper arm in the armband so it was full of gadgets. What's cool about the software is that it told me what my route was. That was neat to see. And then I can go to mapmyrun.com and make a route and send it to my GPS. Or at least there's a link for that.

I thought the Chicago Marathon was on October 5th. For the past two years it has always been on the same day as a 5k I run the first weekend in October. Well, this year, probably because of the heat of last year, they postponed it a week and it's held on the 12th not the 5th when I have my race. Which mean, I could very well, go in and see the race. I've never seen it. I think that'll be cool. Then I can print out my Amtrak tickets at Union Station too. I know a couple people running in it locally and then there's Jesse who I ran with last weekend. I know that I won't be able to point them out but it'll still be cool. I got nothing going on that weekend either. Well, besides a long run on Saturday morning. We'll see.

I mentioned in a few posts ago about listening to audiobooks on my long runs now. Well, I was reading through my Google Reader and noticed that Dean Karnazes posted a blog back on the 22nd about audio books. Someone in the comments put a link up to gutenberg.org which has free classic audio books, some even human read! I'm very excited to see this. I'm thinking of downloading The Time Machine, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Romeo & Juliet, ALL of the Anne of Green Gables books, maybe a few Bible books, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma.

I also ran in my new shoes. Didn't really notice a difference. Still hurt my toes. After I was done, I curled my toes and it hurt to do that. With both feet. Maybe I just need to stretch the arch more? Or my toes better? I don't know.

Best news of the night: I ran a 10k (6.2 miles) in 55:55! That's about the time that I ran my Pumpkinfest 10k last year during my half marathon training! We'll see how the 10 miles goes on Saturday.

Categories: 7 miles, Brent, garmin, shoes

Pay day and now no money

I went up to Rockford again today to see my Daddy. I like that he comes back to Rockford every now and then and has classes at his former workplace so I can see him.

I had a few stores to hit up before we met up. So I go to Best Buy first to look at the GPS watches. They had the display of the Garmin 405. I went to look for a box underneath in storage but I didn't see any, just the 305. A guy came over and asked me if I needed help. I asked if he had any of the 405's. He said "I think I do." I replied, "I think you don't!" The website says that it's backordered so I doubted it. Well after a few minutes of digging behind some boxes, he found one! And it's black!! I was so happy that I couldn't stop smiling! The price rang up as $299.99 but I told him that the price on the website is $269.99. I also had $30 off which made the price $239.99. Yay!!

Then off to Target. I saw this shirt and had to take a picture of it.

Then on over to Dick's Sporting Goods were I picked up my Ascis 2130's. I posted a post on Runner's World asking about my foot print and my shoe situation. They pretty told me that if the 2110's were working and the Nimbus 9's weren't then they 2130's should work and stick with what works. So I bought them. Dick's Sporting Goods says that their return policy is 90 days and has to be pretty clean and non-scuffed. So I asked about my limestone path and if I clean off the bottoms of the shoes, could I bring them back. They said yea, I should be able to. As I explained to them, I can't quite tell if these shoes are going to work on the measley track around here. I have to out and RUN in them.

Then on over to Old Chicago for dinner. Where my father and his co-worker, Tony, showed up a few minutes later. I was playing with my new Garmin but it wasn't charged so wasn't much playing I could do. I put it on and boy, does it feel weird on my wrist. 1) it's longer than the width of my wrist so that's weird. B) It's kinda heavy III) It has a rubber band that I have to pull really tight to make it stay put. I'm hoping that I'll get used to it. Brent says to get a wristband to go under it to make my wrist bigger. Not a bad idea. But then Tony and I were talking running so that was fun. He has a Garmin himself but he wasn't sure of the kind. He bought his like 4 years ago though. He also said that he always carries pepper spray with him to spray at the wild dogs in Mississippi and he said that I should have it myself. I am a girl and will be running, by myself, at night. So I told my Dad, there ya go, Christmas present! We had a good talk, watched a bit of the Sox game, eh. And that was that. I won't be heading back up there this week and he'll be leaving on Friday sometime.

Now I'm home, charging up my Garmin. I have to let it charge fully before using to get the best performance from the battery. I can only use it once this week though, tomorrow. I got a program to go to at 5:45p on Thursday and I dont' think I'll be able to squeeze my run in and get showered, dressed and back over to the college in time and not look all flushed. So I just hope I get it figured out tomorrow after work and before my run and BEFORE it gets dark! So it's tomorrow and then Saturday.

It's also really cool out now so the weather is perfect for running. I got redemption for my EPIC FAIL on Saturday by running 3 miles in 26 minutes on Monday night!

Categories: garmin, shoes