So a story I haven't shared yet . . .

Earlier this spring, when there was still snow, I made a couple of new friends. I was planning on running 21ish miles with Ron and Lisa was to hook up with us for the end. Unfortunately, I wasn't entirely clear in my emails about my intent to join the fun and Ron took off without me. I pulled in to the Fond du Lac parking to see Ron about two blocks up the trail. I honked my horn to no avail so I took my time changing my top layers since it was a little warmer than I thought and called Lisa to let her know I'd be behind Ron and then I headed up the trail. I more or less knew the route - up Mission Creek, up Skyline, along Skyline until dropping down to Cody Street, where we would meet Lisa and hit the DWP trail. So I headed up Mission Creek only to find some surprisingly dastardly amounts of snow.  It wasn't too bad at first, I was punching through ankle deep snow and that's where I met up with my new friends. See, I kept running past where the Superior Hiking Trail crosses the Mission Creek trail when I realized no one else had been post-holing through it in front of me. I turned back and first encountered my new friends, leading the way up the Hiking Trail. Well, that's a strange way to go up Mission Creek, but okay. The snow got progressively worse as we went - knee deep and sharp on my bare ankles and legs. We were moving slow and I was sure that Ron was getting way ahead as I cursed his name for making me run through this but we kept plugging along.

My new friends are twins - practically identical, though you can tell them apart if you're paying attention. They stick out in a crowd, too, with a unique look. They were great running partners - there almost any time I got lonely, showing me the way if I was unsure, and even playing a couple of tricks on me. They warned me where there was deep water under deep snow so I kept my feet more dry. Though, every once and a while, they floated on top of the snow and I followed exactly only to punch through up to my knees. They ran in a very straight line at times and bounded at others. It was downright fun on my way up Skyline (where it was closed and used as a snowmobile trail) to watch my new friends in the snow and see them take the same route through the iced spots that I took or plunge through the same mud puddle that I decided to run through.

I lost my friends somewhere on Skyline after crossing Highway 2. I was worrying at this point - still no sign of Ron and I was WAY behind his predicted time to meet up with Lisa. I hoped they waited up for me since Lisa knew I was coming but I was far enough behind according to my watch that I worried they wouldn't want to wait that long. I headed down the hill only to not see my friends on the snowmobile trail. I decided they must have kept going and taken the SHT down the hill instead and I almost turned around to follow them but decided to keep going and figured we'd cross paths where the SHT goes back onto the trail I was on. But then I got to that crossing and my friends weren't there either! I was quite confused and a little sad. I spit out onto Cody Street and there was Lisa and Ron waiting for me! Turns out he was slowed down a ton by the grossness up Mission Creek, as well, and wasn't any further in front of me than he started.

And on Ron's feet - my new good friends! After following Ron's footprints for so long, marveling at how we would choose the same paths through things, and seeing how they would stand out among the many footprints in the mud on Skyline, it was strange to not have them in front of me anymore. I enjoyed following along - it was almost a scavenger hunt at times to pick his prints out, especially as prints got thick close to the Magney trail head.

I'll be sad when Ron gets a new pair of shoes and I make sure to say hi to my friends whenever he wears them.

So just under 5 weeks to Fargo and I'm finally excited! Actually, that's a bit of a lie since I've been getting excited for the last couple of weeks - I just haven't been writing to tell you about it :)  It's been fabulous to have Kelly to run with - someone training for the same race and looking to run the same speed. Means you never really have to worry that you're slowing your training buddy down or pushing them more than they should be pushed. I've tried to stay around on more weekends than I normally would (or wait to leave until Saturday morning) simply so I can get up crazy early on Saturdays since that's when she does her long runs.

So a couple of weeks ago, we did a nice 20 miler. The first hour was slower since we were running with other people but then we ran at or below goal pace (not on purpose) for the rest! I was gabbing Kelly's poor ear off and running comfortable and was super surprised when she kept telling me the pace.  And then the next day I ran a 5K in 20:58. Granted, it was an indoor (and thus flat) loop course but I had essentially no warm up, it was gross concrete, there was a bunch of weaving going on to get around people, AND it didn't feel hard at all - I was trying to keep fairly comfortable and just let my legs stretch out and work a bit. Awesome.

So that was exciting. The next weekend was a solo 21 miles that felt tougher than it should have been but this weekend was a nice 21.5 with a speed up at the end and involved some pushing through weird pain.

I'm very happy to report that the Kinvaras have been working great for me. I didn't really expect them to but I just bought my second pair - pretty overdue, I think, since my legs have been feeling flat, despite my happy reports up there - and am planning to stick with them for a bit. I'm glad they work because they're SO LIGHT that going back to 'normal' shoes would be super hard. I brought out my racing flats for the Human Race 8K only to realize that they are now just a bit heavier than my training shoes!

I also bought my first ever pair (!) of strictly trail shoes this winter and have finally gotten to test them out. New Balance 110s, I believe. They look like space shoes they're so shiny and silver. Tony over at Duluth Running Company had raved about them on his blog so I checked them out. I've only done a couple of runs in them but like them so far. They fit really nice and were comfortable right away. I might have to be careful as I don't think they have any heel to toe drop so I should probably check out the Saucony Peregrines which I've heard are the trail equivalent to Kinvara. Research to do!

I found out some interesting news tonight . . . Looks like the Fargo Marathon has switched up their pace team times, most likely due to Boston dropping their qualifying times. Though, you would think they'd change their times back when the new times were announced well over a year ago. Urgh. So now the choices for running with a pace group are 3:25 and 3:35 when my goal is 3:30. Now, I have paced myself pretty awesomely before (see towards the bottom of the link where my splits are), if I may say so myself but I was rather looking forward to shutting the brain off and just hanging on a shoulder for the race. Now, my plan was starting to be to hang with the 3:30 pace group and see if things felt good enough to pick it up later in the race. This makes me very much not want to even start with the 3:35 group. And then I worry that those 11 seconds/mile faster for the 3:25 group will be too much. My mantra for a while has been "Don't fuck up Fargo" and so it seems like a big risk to drop my goal pace by 5 minutes less than 5 weeks out . . . So there's some thinking to do, I guess.

Oh yeah. That's what winter running is like. Bad sidewalks, slushy roads, needing gaiters that aren't put on your shoes yet . . .
So I was kicked out of work early during Snowpocalypse Wednesday. Now, usually Wednesdays are for running with a group at the lakewalk. However, I didn't much feel like driving again. And it was awfully nice to have some daylight. Then again, I really wanted to check out those awesome waves. What's a girl to do?


Clearly the answer is to RUN to the lake! So I hooked up with Lisa and we headed out for much fun. Lots of high stepping through deep snow through wind that put us almost to a standstill at times. I thought my feet were getting pretty wet as we ran behind the DECC on the sidewalk and the harbor was coming over the wall and onto the sidewalk as we went through deep snow with no gaiters. . . But no. Those were not wet feet. Wet feet were when we got to the lakewalk only to find the first part of it to be more than ankle deep of ice lake water and slush. Did I mention the part where I don't have my gaiters on yet? Happily, I do have a new pair of awesome pants that are long enough to help keep some of the snow/slush out of my shoes. So we danced our way out of that and admired the lake and took some pictures (see above) and ran about half a mile out on the lakewalk before heading back. My quads were surprisingly pooped by the end from all of the high stepping.

Oh! I am happy to report that my rubbed raw skin got better quite quickly. It kind of looks as though it's plan to stay as a scar, though.

Tomorrow is 11 weeks to Fargo and I'm feeling good about where I'm at. 8 more weeks of good training before taper. I did my first long run with some mileage at pace (about 10 miles of it) and pretty much all of it was under pace. Very exciting! I'm also happy about the part where we slowed down (ran this with Kelly) for a two mile cool down. When we looked at the splits at the end (she has a fancy Garmin), we didn't really slow down much even though it felt soooo easy at the time. Have I talked about where I'm staying for Fargo, yet? I booked a dorm room since they are tons cheaper than the hotel rooms. The best part? It's a 2-3 block walk to the start and finish. Fabulous!

Running has been going pretty awesome for me lately. Yay! I haven't been this excited about training in a long time. Actually, I guess I haven't really trained for something in several months, not since Voyageur, so that could be part of it, too. My legs are tired and it makes me super happy! I've been getting really excited for weekends so I can do my long runs. I'm really liking double longs - especially when I do them in the right order and have my road long Saturday and my trial long Sunday. I've done my 'recovery' trail long the day before the run I'm supposed to be recovering for a couple of times and for some reason, it just doesn't work as well! Now, I'm a fairly antsy person and if I stay home too many weekends in a row (generally that just takes more than one!) then I start getting antsy and want to have an adventure. But I've stayed home a few weekends in a row now and am doing fine so the double longs must be staving off the adventure needs. This makes sense since all I really need to fulfill my adventure needs is a trail run up the shore . . . Anyway, I'm happy with where my mileage is at and I'm ready to add more and excited (and scared!) for when pace specific runs start happening. I'm very, very loosely following a training plan but mostly just doing what makes sense to me. I need to start looking at tempos/repeats, though, so I'll look to the Plan for those type of things.

My body seems to be pretty happy with everything and nothing is too upset with the mileage. I think I mentioned that right after I talked about how nice and un-tight my calves were, they instantly tightened up? Well they got REALLY REALLY bad. Tear inducing bad. Having to stop and walk part way up a hill bad. So I decided on a two fold plan - drop running in Vibrams for a while (even though I'm only running in them once a week) and bring my magical Mr. Blue Thing to work with me. The combination seems to have done the trick - huzzah! And having Mr. Blue Thing hanging out in my office gets a decent amount of comments, too. My job is to do things for a ton of different people so I always have people coming and going and so far only one person has known what it was and he's not even a runner! I'm not sure where this leaves me with the Vibrams, though. I'm thinking of maybe waiting until I'm doing shorter runs on trails (right now I really just hit them longer on Sundays) and ease back into them. But how much more 'ease' can I do when I was only at 4-6 miles a week with them? Or it could be entirely that I'm stretching a ton now and Vibrams would be fine . . . It didn't take long for the crazy tight to go away, so I think I'm safe to experiment with adding Vibrams back.

So! You've all heard the manta - don't do anything new on race day, right? Well here is why - you don't want to be 12 miles in when you suddenly notice horrific random chafing that you can do nothing about. Which is what happened to me on Saturday. I rubbed very, very raw kind of just above my arm pit - a good 6 inches long and over an inch wide. Ow. This brought me to a forced three days off of running since I couldn't do a normal arm swinging motion at all - I had to hold my arm out away from my body. I guess it looked pretty funny on our hike that afternoon (you'll notice I still hiking even though I could swing my arm right). I could barely wear a shirt the rest of Saturday and Sunday, I had to wear the softest thing I owned. I probably COULD have run on Tuesday, but ended up deciding one more day to let it heal was better than running and making it really bad again and having to deal with it for a longer time. Sunday, it was all kinds of mean looking, let me tell you. I actually thought about taking a picture but decided that was a little too weird. That didn't stop me from showing it to all of my running friends, though :) I think I figured out the problem, though. My Icebreaker top has a prominent seam that matches the shape of the rawness. Now, I've worn that long plenty of times with a camel so the problem was the rest of the layers. In the first place, I thought it was colder so I wore too much (t-shirt, plus light long sleeve, plus light jacket) so I was sweaty and I had never worn that particular long sleeve with a camel and that jacket before so I think things just got twisted and caught up just right. And then rubbed for almost 3 hours. Ow, ow, ow. So that, my friends, is why you never wear new on race day.

So back in December, Kyle and I got our third dog - this one from Animal Allies here in Duluth. We've tried very hard but he's just not working out and now we're looking for a new home for him. Why post it here, you ask? Because he's the best running buddy ever!



His name is Jake and I want so badly for this guy to go to another runner. He has so much energy! We've been doing between 4-6 miles and he treats them all: "That was a great warm-up! Let's keep going!" He'll be ready for more mileage with no problem. He runs great at your side (preferring the side away from traffic since buses and dump trucks are kind of scary) and hardly tugs. Loose dogs, leashed dogs, dogs in yards - they don't bother him a bit. He does want to check out people, so I try to run him on not crowded sidewalks/roads. He runs well when you're running WITH someone, as well.



Jake is about 4 years old and an English Setter and Brittany Spaniel mix. He's very cuddly and loves to be right next to you on the couch with his head in your lap. The two reasons we sadly can't keep him:

1) He is growl-y to our other two dogs. They are both very submissive and Jake should have figured out by now that they aren't a threat. Much of the time he's fine with them, walking alongside them with leashes and cuddling together but then he'll out of the blue have an issue - growl and bites (to grab and not to hurt). He needs to be in a house where he's the only dog since he has the need to control the situation around the other dogs. MAYBE one other dog. However, he was great with my two year old nephew over Christmas so kids don't seem to be a problem.

2) He's a runner and can't be trusted off leash unless he's in a completely fenced in area. So he must be on leash while you're running with him. He's gotten loose from us a couple of times and he's off like a shot. He comes back, though, so he might be okay in a country situation where he can be let out the door and allowed to run/wander/come back without danger of roads, etc. He Comes great within a yard or in the house but we can't break through to his brain when he senses freedom.

So. I know there's the perfect home for him somewhere. Please let me know if you are interested in getting a great running buddy and pass it along to anyone you might know who would be. I have more information for those who want it. We'll want to meet any potential owner and he won't be free (though he won't be expensive). Both of these are to make sure he gets to the right home.