Running, Riding & Tailoring

First and foremost, my run this morning.  Spectacular!  I did the same route I ran last Sunday when I had the phone problems and my running app wasn’t able to track my run distance and times.  I thought about going further on today’s run, but I was very curious to see just how far I had gone last Sunday, so I resisted the urge to run a longer distance in favor of being a control freak about my distances.  So, when I finished my loop around the lake, I had clocked 5.26 miles!  Woohoo!  That’s further than I ran the rest of the week!  My average pace was a bit slower than Friday’s time, but the Ladybird Lake trail I ran today (and last Sunday) is “paved” with decomposed granite and there is hills and some stairs involved.  However, when it came to running up the stairs today, I ran up the grass next to the stairs.  I didn’t really slip around at all either, which was nice.  And I found a way to run around the stairs going down on the other side of the bridge because I discovered that if I just run about 100 yds passed where the stairs are, the trail connects with the sidewalk.  So YAY!

I did a little bit of looking around on a couple different sites today, trying to see if I can find a bicycle ride to participate in sometime this fall, in like October or November.  One site didn’t have any rides further out than April listed on their site.  The other site (www.austincyclery.org) had rides for the entire year listed.   I found a ride that I’m interested in for October 13^th.  It happens in Round Rock and takes off from and ends at the Dell Diamond.  There is about 5 different lengths of routes that you can choose from, all the way up to 100 miles!  I’m choosing to do the 63 miler.  That’s basically a metric century.  And the registration fee is only $30!  Woohoo!  And the first 950 people get finisher prizes!  A dry fit shirt, a ticket to the cyclist social pasta dinner and other fun prizes.  So, I’m excited to start training for this ride.  **update, i just looked at the ride info again, and this is the information for the 2012 ride...ugh.  So, i'm sure they'll have a 2013 date for this ride, but now I gotta wait and see when they post the info for this year's ride.  I'm gonna do it, though, I just gotta figure out when it will be.

I went on Amazon.com last night and was looking at bicycle seats.  I really would like to avoid spending $100 or so on a saddle if I can.  I found a saddle (in hot pink!  Woohoo!) that looks like a decent long distance style saddle.  It’s only $13 for this saddle, so I’m going to buy it when I get paid later this week and give it a try.  I hope it works, because if it does and I can ride comfortably for longer than 2.5 hours, then I have scored the deal of the century…as far as bicycle saddles go.  Hahaha.  I currently only have a mountain bike, but it has road slick tires on it since I never off road with it.  I get an annual bonus at work every year on my employment anniversary…which happens at the end of November.  This year, it will be $600, or around $500 after taxes.  I’m going to take that money and put it toward purchasing a nice road bike.  I’m looking to spend about $1000 on one.  It won’t be top of the line, but it will be waaaaaay better than anything you could hope to buy at Wal-Mart.  I’m hoping to hit the 2013 close-out sale and get a more expensive bike for less money, so I’ll be looking in January or February of next year.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a few weeks now, but I finally got around to it yesterday.  I got a new set of work uniforms issued to me about a year and a half ago.  I weighed about 50 lbs more than I do now, so, needless to say, they’re quite baggy on me.  While I can’t personally do anything about the pants (when I reach my weight loss goal in 16 lbs, I will email the supply officer and see about trading my current work pants in for ones that fit better…if they don’t have any to trade to me, then I will pay to have 2 of the 4 altered), I *can* do something about the shirts.  So, yesterday, I put one of them on inside-out and pinned it in on the sides.  Then I took it off, marked it with fabric chalk and removed the pins.  Then I ran it thru the sewing machine and voila! tailored shirt!  And let me tell you, it looks sooooo much better on me than it did before I took the sides in.  I calculated and I removed about 5-6 inches off the circumference of my shirt!  Holy cow!