Rock the Vote

Time to vote Houston people; Tuesday, November 6th is election day! As I discussed earlier, Prop 15 is on the ballot, and I think it deserves your support. Here's a link to some voter resources in case it's been a while...

3.5 mile Bagel Run from Luke's Monday morning. 17:05 out, with a 16:00 back, so things went pretty well time wise. Training for Chicago allowed me to get a lot of miles in over the Summer, but the heat made them pretty slow. I think these short but fast runs (tempo runs with no warm-up, I suppose) are good as they're helping me get reacquainted with a faster leg turnover. I have a lot to learn though, as evidenced by the fact that I beat Melissa back to Luke's, but she somehow managed to beat me to the bagels! A rookie mistake; I'll have to do better next time.

My right foot continued it's painful ways, but I don't think it is affecting my stride, so I'll just continue with copious ice and stretching. I'm beginning to think my new insoles, the self-proclaimed cure for all that ailed me, may be the culprit; perhaps I need to get some with more cushioning? The bad thing is there's little time left to tinker with new insoles, though I suppose I'll catch a little break after the 25k. Maybe when I buy my Marathon shoes, I'll go with a softer insole, and see how it works.

The next thing looming is the decision between the SunMart 50k, the SugarLand 30k, or the HoustonFIT 21 miler. As I can't imagine anything much worse for my ailing feet than a 30 mile trot, I'll probably go with SunMart! Actually, I kind of want to complete all 3 warm-up runs, so SugarLand is the leading candidate for now (though some would say 18.6 on crowned concrete is as bad as 30 on soft trails). I heard someone break SunMart down as a 21 mile training run with a 9 mile run/walk/crawl tacked onto the end; if my feet heal up, I might be willing to give that approach to it a try. Regardless, those are my options for my long run, and they're only about one month away!

Enough about my angry feet! As for the rest of my health, I think I'm getting over the "house buying bug". I plan to still keep an eye on things, but I no longer feel the urge to make it happen right now; hopefully though, it will happen before my lease ends next August. One interesting thing is I was telling someone I wanted to live near Memorial since I spend so much time there. I initially questioned myself with, "what a stupid reason to want to buy a house, because of the place you run", but really, I guess I'm comfortable with that being a big factor. I run a lot there, bike there, go out in the area, and it's a great commute regardless of where in Houston work puts me. Even if it's actually a bad reason, it limits my search area (a good thing) and let's me know what I'm going to have to pay to make it happen.

Now Go Vote!