In Flux

There's a lot I haven't been talking about on this blog lately.  No particular reason, other than that it's all a little overwhelming and thinking about exercise keeps my mind off things for a while.  In a sentence, my life could change drastically within the next few weeks.  Not in a bad way - it's all job and school related - but a lot could happen very quickly, or nothing could happen at all.  So I don't know whether to revel in the possible excitement of it all or brace for disappointment.

So,  bought myself a Garmin 305.  I've been toying with the idea for a while, as I think I mentioned in my last race report, and after working up the ultra training schedule earlier this week, it makes a lot of sense to have one as a training tool.  All of my long runs are done by time, as opposed to distance, and I while I'm not all that bad at guesstimating time from distance (it's not like I just started running, after all) I don't expect I'll be able to remember those routes when they get really long, nor do expect I'd be able to remember a really long route I made up on the fly unless that route was really simple.  And I hate really simple routes - might as well be on a freaking treadmill.  Actually the thing will free me from serious route planning altogether, plus give me access to more data than I currently know what to do with.

LOL, retail therapy truly wins as a stress-reducer.  I'll take it.

Put in a bit of a crazy run this morning.  According to my new schedule, I'm supposed to run a 4 - 5 mile with lots of hills, fast, or something along that order.  It was really quite hot this morning - I head out fairly early and it was 87 degrees by the time I was done (wasn't brave enough to look before I headed out) with a heat index of around 100.  So I did a new course that is close to home with a half a dozen shorter hills, as it's hard to keep any run to the longer hills, such as they are, without doing over 7 miles.  When I got to the top of the last one I was pretty gassed and walked about a block to catch my breath a bit; that bothered me until I got home and calculated my pace, which was waaaay faster than I realized.  All in all, successful outing. 

Speaking of new toys, the boys got one recently, a pressed catnip ball.  They likey.

Forrest manages to get a moment alone with the 'nip.  Note the eyes about to pop out of his head...