weekend catchup

and so ends a fairly uneventful weekend. We watched a couple movies, had some migas, did some shopping and I got in at least one workout. I also ate way too much. This week will be focused on eating out as little as possible. We overdid it a bit over the past couple of days.

Being payday weekend I finally caught up on a couple of the workout related upgrades I've been wanting to do. Some of those upgrades were exciting (new running shoes) and others less so (new swim cap and nose plug). I got to try everything out today and when I get my iPod from the car tomorrow morning I'll port the nike+ graph over here.

Saturday afternoon before meeting up with friends for a barbecue adventure we went over to the local sporting goods store to check over the shoe selection. A couple of weeks ago I checked out the local DSW but was a bit underwhelmed by the selection. I also really wanted to try out the current range of Nike Shox shoes. I did Ironman Wisconsin in a pair of Nike Shox and they were maybe the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn. For whatever reason I never bought another pair.

First things first, if there was a dearth of options at the DSW, the Academy had WAY too many running shoe options. This wouldn't be a bad thing if there were decent sales people around to help out but I couldn't grab the attention of the ones who WERE there because they were busy trying to hunt down a shoe shoplifter. I grabbed a couple of things off the shelf that looked interesting (one of the Lunarglide shoes and a Nike Air Moto) and started to go through the shoe investigation process.

Saturday afternoon probably wasn't the best time to go shoe shopping. As I put on the first pair of shoes I realized that I didn't really have the room to jog back and forth and feel how my feet responded. I also realized that my shin splints hadn't quite healed up from earlier in the week (one of the reasons replacing my running shoes was suddenly more imperative). The Lunarglides were kind of hard to get into. Once I was in them, they felt OK but not great. The insert didn't really fit my foot. It felt like their were weird lumps underneath my right foot.

The second pair, the Nike Air Motos felt much better. My foot felt like it settled in where it needed to be but I was a little concerned that they were the cheaper shoe. I jogged back and forth, noted that everything seemed to be good and went to try and find the Nike Shox the shelf told me I needed to find a sales associate to help me with. I found a rep, convinced him to temporarily ditch the stakeout and he procured me two pairs; a Nike Shox Turbo and a Turmoil. Honestly? After trying both of them I tried the Motos back on and realized that I was better off with the cheaper shoe.

I present to you my new babies.

I did my first two miles in them today. It felt really good. My shins gave me a little grief early in but I adjusted a little bit and finished strong. I still don't completely trust the numbers the Nike+ is giving me, but they jibe fairly closely with what the treadmill said so it's probably true that I did each of the two miles in about an 11:30-12:00/mi range. I did get a little celebratory message from some unknown woman after I completed my workout. The first time this happened I was a little confused. I hit the workout finish button and this woman in my headset says "congratulations. This is Paula Radcliffe, you've just run your fastest mile." I know that I should know who Paula Radcliffe is but I don't so it's just odd when I hear her tell me her name and tells me that I've set a new personal record. Thank you strange anonymous lady.

While I was at the sporting goods store I also picked up a new swimsuit. For whatever reason, neither of the two 24 Hour Fitness locations near me have a swimsuit dryer. I've always found this odd since everywhere I worked out in Colorado had a dryer but apparently YMMV. Because of this 'lack of dryer' problem I've generally ended up laying out my suit on the little raised platform in the back of the PT Cruiser. This tends to dry the suit fairly quickly but it's left the car smelling chlorinated... kind of a lousy side effect.

I have an easy solution, I could just wear my old racing speedo. Aside from being fairly hydrophobic it just has less surface area... it doesn't take nearly as long to dry. That said, in my current state, that's not such a great idea. I tried it the other night at the gym and I just felt naked. It wasn't a good experience. As a compromise solution I picked up a pair of trunks that look more like bike shorts. I felt much better with the extra coverage.

(if only this were me. heh.)

Today, at Old Navy I picked up a couple of technical shirts and running shorts. Nothing completely exciting but having a much lighter fabric (I'd been running in sweat shorts and a t-shirt) seemed to be beneficial.

On to a little movie review as a way to wrap this up.

Ang and I finally caught up with A Serious Man this morning. This is yet another Fantastic Fest film that we missed because we didn't have VIP passes. Oh well. Next year that won't be an issue. I love the Coen Brothers. I love that they grew up in Minnesota. I love the way they write. I love their revolving cast of character actors and I love the way they use music (that's often researched by another person I love, T Bone Burnett). So with all of that prefacing my comments... I just have to say, "I don't get it." I appreciated the few little Minnesota touches (they eat at Embers at one point in the movie, they visit a Bloomington Red Owl grocery, they hire Ron Meshbesher, famous Minnesota ambulance chaser and star of many many local afternoon commercials... look at this classy example from his son...

but aside from that? It left me cold. I'm excited to see what they do next with True Grit but I don't know that I ever need to watch A Serious Man again.

more tomorrow.

B