Spend a little... spend a lot!

This weekend I took advantage of the Running Room gift card I got from my parents for my birthday last week and also a great sale at a certain big box store. What follows is my haul:



Yes, they are men's, but they were on clearance for $5 and have built in underwear. With my thunder thighs muscular quads, I need something loose that won't drive me crazy with ride up, so I'm going to give these a chance for gym and hot outdoor running.



These 3/4 length tights are more like ankle waders on me, but they are super light and will be great for long runs. I'm thinking these may be the race pants on May 15th.



We ran 16k yesterday, and after last Sunday's 14k, I knew I needed something extra to get me through. I bought this particular flavour on the recommendation of my pace group leader. It was okay, but a bit sweet. I think I'll try the lemon flavour next week. I took half of this at 6k and half at 11k, but next Sunday we are doing a varied pace 16k with T and M paces, so I think I'll be needing two.

And finally (at the big box store - on sale for $150):



Happy Tax refund to me!

This major purchase confirms my runner status to me even more. Especially because when I made my facebook status: "Just bought a Forerunner 305! Yippee!", half of the people who commented on it thought I had bought a new car. HA!

Now, I'm putting my wallet away for a while... even though I need new shoes!

I know why runners talk in miles...

Besides the fact that many of them are American.

It just feels shorter when you're talking about a 5 mile run versus a 8 kilometre run.

Yesterday, I ran 5 miles at the gym on the treadmill. I did a true easy pace and it took me 59 minutes. It was an easy run from the mental aspect as well.

Let me expand and tie all of the above together.

The treadmills at the gym only talk in miles, so I knew that I needed to go 5 miles to get my prescribed 8k in (I've combined my Thursday and Saturday runs into one Friday run). I knew that 1.86 miles was equal to 3km.

I like math.

Thus, I spent a lot of the time being annoyed by Regis and Kelly looking at the display and calculating how many kilometres I had run, how many I had left, and what time I'd be at when finished.

The mental aspect of finishing 5 miles instead of 8km really kicked in once I had run 2.5mi/4km.

What makes you feel better?

2.5 to go

or

4 to go

Regardless of the fact that it is the exact same distance, it sure feels a whole lot easier to count down 2.5 miles.

And thus, I learned why lots of runners (even Canadians) tend to talk in miles after a while.

Looking forward to 10 miles with the group on Sunday.

Crazy or just a typical runner?

Yesterday the GTA was hit with our typical spring snow fall. Well, typical in that the snow fell, a-typical in that 11+ centimetres fell over the course of 12 hours.

So, our planned hills were cancelled and in fact our group leader suggested via email that we run them on a treadmill if possible.

So, I did.

After supper with the family (a lovely unrushed affair because I wasn't on a timeline) and nursing the baby to sleep (GAH! The baby is almost 7.5 months!), I headed out to the gym at the grocery store and got on the treadmill.

I had a tiny post-it note with cheat times and mileage on it so that I knew when to ramp up the hills and speed etc and off I went. The gym was empty, TLC taught me all about Sister Wives and Charlie Sheen and after figuring out that I needed to actually hold on to my cheat sheet (it fell twice), I was in a huge zone.

5 hills plus warm up and cool down took me an hour and 8.4km.

Did you know that treadmills go into cool down mode after an hour?

Neither did I.

I felt so good after getting the hills done even though while I was running them, I was cursing the 1/4 miles.

So, does this make me crazy or just a typical runner?