i have seen the light.

7.27 miles

1:09 hours

9:34 avg mile

6.3 mph avg speed

10.5 max speed

715 total calories

yesterday was my last long weekday run before the st. jude's 1/2 marathon!!!!

oh my goodness - the big day is quickly approaching!

saturday will be our last long training run and then we will taper until race day. i'm so excited to see a light at the end of this fun tunnel i've been exploring. my plan is to run 12 miles this saturday and run the Great Duck Race 10k in stuttgart, AR while i am home for turkey day. mmmmm turkey!

anywho. back to those stats up there.....

that is an account of the stats for my run downtown last night.

pretty cool, huh?

wanna know how i know that????

my birthday is just around the corner (eek!) and jwood has been asking me for weeks now - what do you want for your birthday?

one might not think that was such a tough question, but there hasn't been anything that i have just been longing for..... other than for him to finish this semester. since that's a given the week after my birthday, (thank goodness!!) i was back to square one.

i've been a so-called "runner" for a few years now and have often wondered and been intrigued by the small laptops that the fancy runners wear on their wrists.... what's the hype about? i mean - you're running. you're going to finish. you're going to burn calories. if you want to know your pace - you should just probably run faster. what does that insanely large thing you wag around on your wrist do that is so fancy that you can't just get out of a normal watch and a few math problems? bingo. math. i hate math.

well, after talking to some people at TR2 on monday night - i decided i watned to jump on the mini-laptop watch bandwagon. i wanted that overly large display that would tell me more than i ever really needed to know about my little running outings. i shared this news with jwood and he surprised me yesterday at lunch with my early birthday present!!!! i heart birthdays. :) i/we wanted to make sure that i was adjusted and liked it before the 1/2 marathon, which is 5 days after my birthday. yay!

i got the garmin forerunner 305!!!

source

she is amazing!!! i need to name her. any suggestions? i wore her for the first time last night and it was SO COOL! i had no idea how quickly it would track my pace, my mileage, the time of day, my heart rate, my paused time at stop lights and water breaks, my fastest speed, my average speed, the elevation, the stock market rates, airline rates and delays, the chicago board of trade, NASA's latest endeavors....

ok, i'm getting carried away, but...

you name it, this puppy does it all!

now, i get it.

but, lemme tell ya. it's large. i have a wrist size equivalent to that of a 4 year old. fingers that mirror an infant. seriously. ring size 4.25. i'm not kidding. so, this little nugget of knowledge looks like a boom box on my arm. i told jess to watch the news last night to make sure that a runner wasn't hit in traffic downtown because i was pretty sure that A) i was going to get hit by a car by not paying attention to where i was going, but pushing buttons on my laptop or B) i was going to lose balance and fall over into traffic to the right because the thing is so big.

thankfully, neither of those things happened.

in fact, i fell in love.

i have been running in darkness, now i have seen the light.

thank you so much for my early birthday gift, jwood!

i love it!!!