Sunday, February 12, 2012

12athon: Month 2 (AA)

Ow.

Okay, so today it was supposed to be cold. Unlike practically everyone else on the planet, I was expecting it. So I looked around for indoor options. There are two that are available to me thanks to being a student (grad/professional), and I picked the more heated one (i.e., not the Recreational Sports Dome): the 200-meter indoor track in the University Field House. Which is open 12n-10p on Sundays, yay!

Except I was running late--things to do afterward--so I didn't take any pictures. But if you really want to know what it looks like, there's a picture in the header of the University Field House link above. Otherwise, I can point you to this picture:



(which I borrowed from this guy, who is 200% more badass than I could ever be. Go give him hits on his blog to make up for me borrowing the picture. It's not the same track, I don't think, but the one at the U looks rather similar, in that 'red indoor track' sort of way.)

ANYWAY. I was running late. Sort of. Not at the beginning. The sign said that 6.9 laps on the outside equaled one mile, so I did some fast-and-dirty math (yes, math can be fast and dirty) and came up with 83 laps. Which, I suppose, is better than the 96 I was thinking I had to do. (I would have definitely cried ninety-six tears.) So I divided that into 21, 21, 21, and 20 laps. In each break, I drank water and ate some of the Cherry Blossom Honey Stinger organic chew things I happened to have (thanks, K!). Surprisingly tasty, considering that I'm iffy on cherry-flavored things.

Four hundred and ninety-eight million laps later (about 70 laps, honestly), my feet felt like lead--sooooo difficult to lift 'em. So, inspired by the two honest-to-crap barefoot runners I saw earlier and the two people in VFFs, I said eff it and kicked my shoes off and ran the rest barefoot. It didn't hurt less, but it hurt differently. I did end up with a blister on one toe but I'm unclear as to whether it happened before, while my feet were swelling in the shoes, or while I was barefoot.

Honestly, that's the only interesting thing that happened during the entire run. 200-meter tracks are tiny. I forgot my headphones, so no music--I mostly listened to people playing soccer on the other side of the curtain.

So, numbers (as someone who is not Steve Chiotakis says now):

Distance: 12.03 mi
Time: 2.35 (so no, I didn't knock 15 minutes off my time, but 10 was good!)
Laps: 83
Laps barefoot: 13
Other women on the track: 1
Other people on the track: 9
People wearing minimalist shoes/no shoes: 5 (not counting me)
People who pretty much tried to knock me over every time they passed me: 1 (wtf, guy)
Water bottles (20 oz) consumed: 3
Challenges done this month: just 1--Sisyphus

Oh, and if anyone else is from Minnesota and reading this, the DSW in Maple Grove has a pretty good selection of Merrell True Gloves (men's) for $80 (instead of $110). *shrugs*

4 comments:

  1. I love the barefoot laps! Nice job.

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  2. In my town there is a tiny YMCA that allegedly has a tiny track. If it were open on a Sunday, and if I were a member, that would've been a much smarter option. Great job! I pointsed you up last night on Facebook, but I can't remember what the total was in my deviled egg hangover.

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  3. Congrats on surviving the mind blasting sisyphus! My least favorite challenge.

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  4. Excellent running and well done on the Sisyphus challenge. For some reason, that one entices and scares me at the same time.
    And, I can attest to the down-and-dirtyness of math. That's pretty much the only kind of math I do. And, I pretty much pay the price for it every time.

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