Welshrunner Through the Ages

What would you have looked like if you'd been born in another era? Well, this website gives you the chance to find out by letting you upload a photo of yourself and superimpose it onto a yearbook photo from another year.

So I figured I'd try it out, and here's what I came up with:

2008 - the Original. This is the photo I uploaded to the website. It was taken earlier this year after one of my races.

The 1950s. Well knock me down with a squashed banana, but this actually looks like an old photo of my dad. Very worrying.

The 1960s. Oh dear, can anyone say Austin Powers? Hopefully nothing more than a drug-induced hallucination, this is a horrifying look at what might have been. Yeah, baby.

The 1970s. Almost an improvement on the 60s, here are the "silly 70s". I can but hope that I have that much hair when I'm in my 70s.

The 1980s. In the history of humanity, there have only ever been two things that mankind has sought to completely eradicate - the smallpox virus and the mullet. Here you can see why. Just think, while you're reading this some poor dad somewhere is trying to explain to his kids why this crime against fashion was ever cool

The 1990s. Not much better, especially that second one. Luckily for me, my hair is curly so none of these ridiculous styles are possible.

Getting Ready to Rock and Roll

Haven't been feeling great this week - sore throat and just kinda achy and lethargic. Hope I feel better soon because it's a big weekend - I'm doing 10 or 11 miles with the group tomorrow morning and then Sunday I'm running the inaugural San Antonio Rock & Roll marathon. Looks like it's going to be a zoo - sold out with 35,000 runners. I just found out today that I need to work on Sunday afternoon, so no post-run concert for me. I'll be heading down to San Antonio tomorrow after my run for packet pickup (no pickup on race day - we're spoiled by the ultramarathon race directors).

We had the day off Wednesday and I took a trip down to the courthouse and got my speeding ticket dismissed - hooray. We then decided to try a new restaurant for lunch - the "Fujian Grand Buffet" - which recently opened in the building the "Old San Francisco Steakhouse" used to occupy. The lunch buffet was a little more expensive than usual, but there was a lot of choice. You paid as you went in (which made sense seeing how large and busy it was), and they had at least 10 buffet tables, along with a decent sushi bar and a mongolian grill-style noodle bar. The dishes were mostly ok - nothing special - with the exception of the crab rangoon which was excellent. There was nothing particularly Fujian in style, but my main problem was the lack of labeling throughout the buffet. About 1 in 4 dishes were labeled, so you were never really sure what you were getting. The place was packed full of people, and maybe it was just me but it seemed as though almost everyone in there was as wide as they were tall.

Not a bad place, but I don't think we'll be going back any time soon.

All The Gear And No Idea

I am a dirty girl!!! Ok, let me back up and rephrase that. I went to the "dirty girl gaiters" online store and bought two pairs of gaiters. These are great little devices that help keep dirt, mud and stones out of your shoes while running trail, and a lot of my friends have recommended "dirty girls". After I got divots taken out of both my heels at Cactus Rose, I decided it would be a good idea to invest in these for Sunmart, Bandera and Rocky. Don't go all Freudian on me, but my choices were "Hog Wild (b&w)" and "Lime Gatorade Hurl" (though I wish I had picked "the wall" now).

And speaking of feet and blisters, I have decided to try pre-taping my feet for the longer races (past my usual "oh, I've got a blister. Let's slap some duct tape on it"). I did a lot of research online and found a number of articles on feet taping by Denise Jones and John Vonhof. They seemed to favor Elastikon and Micropore tape, using Tincture of Benzoin as an adhesive. So a quick trip to zombierunner.com and I will soon have a whole bunch of taping supplies to experiment with.

I've also been trying to figure out what type of gel works best for me. I've had good results with both Crank Sports e-gels and Hammer Gels. The only problem is that I'm usually too lazy to use them - too messy and far too much fuss. Then I noticed at Cactus that John - my runner - was using big containers of hammer gel (called Hammer Gel Jugs) - and squeezing them into flasks that he carried with him. "A ha" thought I, "that could be the ticket for me". So I bought a couple of jugs, along with some gel flasks and holders (to clip onto my shorts, armband or handheld). Let me just say that Hammer Nutrition has some of the best customer service I've experienced while shopping for running gear (to rank alongside Drymax socks and runningwarehouse.com). They responded to my questions promptly and made me feel as if I really mattered. I just got notification of my order and they have also thrown in a whole host of freebies including 3 different flavored gel packets, samples of heed, recoverite and perpetuem, some energy bars and a free gel flask. These guys rock. If you've never shopped with them before, click on the referral icon (in the menu to the left) to get 15% off your first order.

The two flavors I got were orange and Espresso (for the latter stages of races when I need that sudden shot of caffeine). I steered clear of the vanilla because I have plenty of vanilla flavored Spiz. If you use Hammer gels, what is your favorite flavor?

Anyway, enough shameless plugging. Yesterday I decided to make up for my lack of miles this weekend by doing a nighttime traverse of Ken's followed by a road run around the hills of Ladera Norte. I sent an email out to the HCTR list to see if anyone was interested in joining me, and Henry and Naresh both bit. We had such a good time. Ken's looks so different after dark and none of us had run it at night. We did a little bit of "exploring" (ie getting lost) while nattering away. The night was still and humid and we all wondered where "winter" had gone. Coming back along the flats, I hit a nice rhythm and fell into that elusive groove where running is easy. We got back to the cars, switched out to road shoes, topped up our water and set off into the hills. Midway through the run, the rains came together with a lovely breeze - it felt terrific and refreshed us. We stopped after climbing to the top of one of the hills, turned around and enjoyed the view of the city at night.

It was a great run that reminded me of all the reasons I enjoy this sport: good scenery + good company + good friends = good times

Training with Gatti

The first year I trained for the Austin marathon Mr Gatti's pizza was my motivation. For every new distance I ran (and before that point the longest I had run was 10k) I rewarded myself with a Mr Gatti's pizza that night. I vividly remember being at mile 16 of my first 30k and promising myself 16" of pepperoni, mushrooms and Italian sausage if I could only run those last few miles without stopping. It worked too.

Well, this morning I woke up with a stuffy head (and probably running a fever) and really didn't want to get up to run. If I wasn't coaching a group I would probably have stayed in bed, but I got up and ran a so-so 13 miles. To add to that, the weather has suddenly turned cold (it was 38F when we started). Do I feel guilty about not doing more? Heck no - I think I've done enough over the last month and was probably due a break anyway (especially with the San Antonio marathon next week). When I got home, I listened online to the BBC's radio coverage of the Wales rugby team playing the world champion South Africans. They lost 20-15 and wasted a great chance to win the game in the last minute, which didn't make me feel much better. By this afternoon I was enjoying my own little pity party when Nancy suggested we pick up a Mr Gatti's pizza for supper. Ah, she knows exactly how to cheer me up (even when I don't). I haven't had one for over a year and some comfort food sounded like an excellent idea. Let me tell you, it was every bit as good as I remember. The day I don't enjoy a Mr Gatti's pizza is the day I know I'm really sick.

And on a completely different note, here's a tip for all you linux users who have a hotmail account. You may find that the new version of Microsoft "windows live" blocks you from creating or replying to hotmail messages under linux. To get around this, you have to fool hotmail into thinking you are running windows by using an agent switcher. See this article on how to do it.

2008/2009 Training Season - Week 11

Saturday 11/8/08
road - 13 miles. Done - 1:48:40 (8:22 pace). Woke up with a stuffy head and just felt a little off. Didn't want to go run and wished I could stay in bed, so I just did the 13 with my group. Not a bad run, but felt harder than it should have.

Sunday 11/9/08
trail - 6 miles. Ran Ken's with Larry K. Nice steady run - finished in just under an hour.

Monday 11/10/08
trail - 5 miles. Done.
road - 6.5 miles. Done - ran with Henry and Naresh. We did our first nighttime traverse of Ken's loop and then switched into our road shoes and hit up some of the Ladera Norte hills. Nice enjoyable run with good company.

Tuesday 11/11/08
track - speedwork. Not done. A hailstorm and torrential rain stopped me from going to the track, so I did 50 minutes of aerobic weights instead.

Wednesday 11/12/08
trail - tbd

Thursday 11/13/08
rest

Friday 11/14/08
rest

Lazing Around

While lying on the couch last night and eating my third piece of Halloween candy, I wondered if I might just be the laziest ultrarunner in history. I mean, sure, I like to get out there and run, but whenever I hear stories of people who spring up in the morning, jump out of bed and lace up their running shoes with grins that wouldn't be out of place in toothpaste commercials I realize just how much more I prefer lazing around eating chocolate (Twix is my favorite) and watching mindless TV. That's probably reason enough to make myself get up and get out right there.

Anyways, I finally got round to uploading some of our Halloween night pictures.

Batgavin does the rounds

Enjoying the haul and waiting for trick-or-treaters. We set up camp outside and dragged out the jukebox. Gavin seemed to enjoy handing out the candy even more than collecting it

Gavin resting after a good dance

Nancy opens a bottle of "Vampire" red wine while the jukebox pumps out Jace Everett's "Bad Things" - very appropriate

Gavin and Daddy in the Batcave

Even ace crime fighters need their bedtimes but this one didn't want to go inside and fell asleep where he was. Daddy carried him to bed later - still dressed as Batman.