Monday, February 2, 2009

Look! There, in the sky....

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's.....THE SUN!

That's right, the sun decided to pay us a little visit this weekend, and it was amazing. Saturday it got up to 60 degrees here, so the husband and I decided to move our long run up a day to take advantage of the great weather. We managed to get in 6 miles in an hour and 8 minutes. The only stop for walking was when took a quick break around mile 3 to slug down a couple of Clif Shot Energy Gels. I had the Strawberry flavor (which also has 25mg of caffeine) and the husband had Razz. While the taste of the strawberry gel was nowhere near as good as the blocks, it wasn't bad. Just different. I washed the gel down with a couple of swigs of water and headed back out on to the trail. (When I asked the husband what he thought of the Razz flavor, his response was, "It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.")

After my experience with the shot blocks, I was waiting for the stomach cramps to begin. Luckily, they never came. And, the best part was that I could really tell a difference in my energy level during the last leg of my run. I honestly felt like I could have kept running for another mile or two without much problem.

In my excitement to get out on the trail and soak up the sun, there was one thing I overlooked. The mud. Once it started to warm up on Saturday morning, all of the ice and snow covering the trail started to melt, turning the trail into a swamp. After about a mile, my shoe laces were so wet and dirty that they refused to stay tied. It didn't matter if I tied them tighter or looser, double or single knotted, they were coming untied every quarter mile or so. Eventually I just gave up and ran the last 2 miles with my shoes untied.

Here's what my shoes looked like when we got home:

And for reference, the shoes are supposed to be white, not brown. The mud also came through the tops of the shoes, leaving my socks looking like this:

Somehow the husband's shoes came through unscathed. Hmmm....

****

I also popped in to a weight watchers meeting on Saturday morning. I was down 1.8 pounds since my last meeting (two weeks ago) to 140.2 lbs., which means I have now officially lost all the weight I put on over the holidays. Woo hoo!

2 comments:

MyRunningJourney said...

Congrats on the weight loss! Very exciting! And nice socks. :)

d.a.r. said...

Congrats on the weight loss! That sounds like an awesome run. I am just attempting to figure out the shot blox and gels myself. I'm glad I found your blog!