Archive for March 24th, 2008

Devoid of religion as I am, this year I celebrated Easter the best way I know how: stuffing my face with Robins Eggs, Whoppers (because the Robin’s Eggs coating seem mildly toxic, an opinion I established after eating the entire bag), Reese’s Pieces and to cap a wonderful Saturday date-night with Nick, we stopped at our local diner for a slab o’ German Chocolate Cake.

A thoroughly satisfying holiday.

Friday night was happy hour with our friend Yvonne and the groupette of the week (she’s our resident event planner, always creating a party out of her huge list of friends). We went to a hipster bar where a couple of Jameson Whiskey girls wasted a couple hours of their lives going around the room offering shots and letting the patrons roll dice for a prize. I won some Jameson branded breath-strips. Seriously.

Saturday was a 5-mile recovery run after Friday’s intervals, then later the fabulous Date Night occurred. We’ve decided to make more of an effort to have them, because we really do have a good time out with each other – dressing up a little, talking about the people around us, eating good food and then going home for some drunken antics.

The latter bit caused me to tweak my hip a tad, though (why do I get all my injuries this way?) so yesterday’s long run was interesting. It was a 14-miler that I decided to do as a progression run.

I started the run at 9:15 pace and finished at 8:28. Felt really good about it, despite my niggling hip. Additionally, I came to the conclusion that my 2130s are not the fab shoes I want them to be – my suspicions were confirmed when my right arch started smarting, as it usually does after about 10 miles. I’ve tried lacing them tighter or looser but alas, it’s the way they are (or my foot is).

Luckily, I have 3 other pairs of shoes with varying degrees of mileage so I can use my 2120s for long runs, but I need to get fitted for a different shoe soon since a couple pairs are nearing the 400 mile mark.

But what was interesting about this run was that belly breathing thing I keep yammering on about. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the first half of the run, but when I started speeding up, my hip and arch were beginning to really irritate so I moved my attention to breathing which turned out to be a smart move.

I felt myself straighten up, get less tired of all things, and it wasn’t long until I did a body check and realized my arch and hip weren’t hurting anymore! I’m cynical enough to know that it wasn’t the magic of breathing per se, more likely the simple distraction of thinking about something else, but that’s cool! Whatever it takes.

I finished the run on a high note and today, even though I don’t feel my hip at all, I’m taking the day off before tomorrow’s tempo run. I want to be more prudent with rest so that my quality runs are full-on qualitastic from here on in. No tired legs for me.

So that’s the weekend in a nutshell. Hope you guys had a good one, too!