Two runs and a purchase

First: Eric (my brother) is running the CIM (California International Marathon) in Sacramento this Sunday. Barring any major catastrophes, he's going to break 3:20 and he's going to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Shoot him an email of encouragement if you get a chance. His email is nortontwin@gmail.com. Thanks!


7 around the fountain

Thankfully this run was much better than the last one. I didn't go very fast, but it all went well. My guess is that the bad run on Tuesday was a product of my cruddy long run on Sunday. I'll push for a slower starting pace with Brice for this weekend. Here's an observation that I hope becomes a hard proven truth for me at some point: When I start slow and then steadily increase my speed, the run turns out well. I'll test this again this weekend.

I also think that part of the problem with my run on Sunday was that I had bad supplements with me. I used to be able to suck those things down without any problem, but not anymore. Which brings me to my purchase.

Purchases:

I dropped a C note ($100) on running supplements and a cool light for running. So, as you've seen in my other blogs, I'm turning to Hammer Nutrition for my running gels, electrolyte drinks, and recovery stuff. However, to get it, I needed to go to a Bike Shop. And in case you didn't know, bicyclist and runners do not coexist very well at all. As I've said in other postings, I attribute this to the "middle child" syndrome. They aren't cars, but they have to follow those rules; and they are not pedestrians, to whom they have to be nice. So they hate the cars and runners with equal vigor. But I digress...I went to a bike shop for my supplies and my fellow "cyclists" were interested in how much I biked, where I rode, was I a "trail guy" or a "road guy". And I finally had to break down and tell them that I was a runner, which put a noticeable damper on the customer service that I had been receiving up to that point. Nonetheless, they had what I needed and I was happy.

While I was there I decided that I'd get a new safety-flasher-thingy for my dark morning runs (my old one died after a year of faithful service), and they had something that totally caught my interest. It's called the Infini Amuse, which is an LED light that is designed to be strapped onto handlebars.


The cool thing is that the strap is a piece of rubber that wraps around the handle bar and hooks back onto the LED. What's cool about that? It turns out that a finger is just as big a handle bar. So I can hook that onto my finger and off I go. I don't have to hold anything and my hands are free to remain relaxed during my run. Plus, those two little LEDs are about as bright as the Sun. Holy cow!! I'll give you an update after I've used it a couple of times.

30 minutes on the rack:

The kids got in the way again this morning, so I did a quick 3o on the stair stepper, elliptical thing. No fun, but at least I got a workout in.

Now get back to work.