I like to move it, move it....

New shoes! Yay! Well new - but the same ones I have been running in...
Danny, Sara and I went to JackRabbit today to look at shoes. Sara recently got the Asics Nimbus VIII, so she wasn't looking, but Danny and I both needed a new pair. I think I only put about 250 miles on my shoes, but last year I probably put about 150 on them when I stopped running because my knee was hurting and then I used them recreationally - so the soles were pretty worn down. The cool thing about JackRabbit is that they have 3 treadmills, each of them have a videocamera on the level of your feet. They take a video of you running and then can analyze whether you overpronate or underpronate. Look at me running in my skydiving t-shirt (that's a story for another time), there's a message for life! "Shut-up and Jump!" The guy to my left who was watching my video, very intently, qualified in last year's NYC marathon for Boston in 3:03 - to which I was like wow! i can't imagine ever qualifying for Boston - though I think I may have to try at some point - I don't like failure.

It turns out that I overpronate a little - which I guess they must have seen when I bought shoes at Super Runner's Shop who sold me my first pair of Adrenalines. Turns out I still over pronate and I need my shoes to compensate. I tried on a few different pairs including a couple of Saucony's and one Mizuno, but I didn't really like how any of them felt. I really liked my Adrenaline's - but unfortunately they changed the colors so I think they are kinda ugly now - but I bought them because they feel good. Who cares if they are all going to laugh at me.

I also bought a few packs of sport beans: 3 each of orange, lemon/line and berry blue. I wish I could use GU or an equivalent but they are not kosher. Also, and perhaps more importantly I noticed a seasonal flavor of Cliff Bars - Caramel Apple Cobbler. Now, I love the Apple Cranberry flavor - and I had a feeling that I would really like this new flavor. But since it's a holiday flavor they were going to be limited - so I bought the store out. I hope I like them.

Danny couldn't decide on shoes - read his blog one of these days when he gets around to posting - so he bought socks and beans. Sara got socks. So all-in-all I was the big winner. Afterwards we got some dinner - very unhealthy - and headed back to the 'stein (that's Einstein - our home base).

I wanted to run today because I am leaving for Israel Thursday afternoon and I was hoping to get 3 runs in before then - so it was either Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or M/W/R. I convinced Sara to come with me but Danny was still sore from yesterday's run. I have been giving a lot of thought to what my goal time for the 1/2 marathon is - and I think I really want to run a sub 2:00, which means that I need to run 9:09 miles. I haven't been running that fast up until now. I felt the need for speed tonight so I pushed us. We finished the first 3 miles at 9:30 pace (approximately, it might have been a drop more than 3 miles). By the last mile I was feeling a little more tired than I usually am at the end of a 4-5 miler, but as has become my custom I try to pick up the pace for the last 1/4 - 1/3 mile. I finished the last mile in 8:45 pace. Granted, these are all approximates since I didn't have a digital watch or a Garmin. Tomorrow (Wed.) my Garmin comes, I can't wait. We did about an extra 1/3 - 1/2 mile after the 4 miles, at a pretty slow pace, we were both tired. I am energized by tonight, I think it means that there is a decent chance I can get my pace down to 9:09.

Tomorrow Danny wants to go to the track to work on some speed training - we'll see how that goes.

Anyway - in other news, I had a paper accepted for publication last week - that I am pretty far down on the author list, but an author nonetheless. Today, I got comments back from the reviewers on a paper that I am second author on - they were very favorable and they wanted minor revisions. I am told that's a good sign - not counting any chickens, but hoping for the best. Gotta resubmit with the revisions.