Skinny on the horizon

I've taken up running outside. I've been running for years, but generally preferred the treadmill because 1) better mileage estimates, 2) air-conditioned, 3) tvs, and 4) don't have weather/time of day limitations.

However, last year, I started running with a friend in her neighborhood. Then, I started occasionally running with PC in his neighborhood. And, then I started doing some 5ks. Running outside was ok, but, I still did a fair share of treadmill running.

Oddly, I've moved to almost pure outside running in the last few months. The idea of going to the work in-house dungeon gym just makes me dread running. And, the gym that work pays for makes me nuts - wherein I pretty much only go for spin classes.

To support this new propensity, and to support my competitive tracking nature, PC bought me the Nike-plus running thingy.

Dude, that thing is totally cool.

Not only does it track my mileage*, it talks to me. When my goal is distance, it tells me periodicially when I've reached X miles. When it's a time goal, it periodicially tells me how much time I have left. And, at the end, it has built in encouragement like "Congratulations, that was your longest run so far!"

Add to this wonderfulness is WW activity points. For those not on WW, activity points are basically that you get credit for exercising and get to potentially eat more. So more points are better.

I discovered that once you move into 40 minutes of running, you get an additional point. Up to this realization, I usually did 30-35 minutes of running. And generally speaking, I usually run about 2-2.5 miles.

So, earlier this week, I decided to set my goal at 40 minutes. The plan was to run as far as I could for 20 minutes (Nike thingy tells me I'm at my halfway point), and then run back.

And, you know how far I went?

Nearly 4 miles.

How the hell did that happen?

I'm retrospectively exhausted.

To reward my awesomeness, I just bought the most expensive running shoes I've ever considered. Based on the 2010 Running Shoes review by Runners World, I think I'm going to love these new little guys.

*Truth in not-advertising, I think the mileage tracking is inaccurate. It generally thinks I go farther than I do. I've tried calibrating it, but that doesn't seem to have fixed it. I usually use mapmyrun to estimate actual distance when I want to know...otherwise, I just assume reliable measurement error and focus on whether I've been increasing my distance.