There Is Nothing Funny About Skinny Margaritas

Look, I made it skinny. Har har har.

Friends, I can stay silent no longer. Finding myself confronted with Skinny Margaritas is not something I often have to worry about too much because I do not generally frequent the types of establishments that serve such abominations. But I've seen it making the rounds enough lately that I feel like it would be shirking my civic duty as a defender of good & proper cocktails not to say something.

I am going to pick on some people on the internet briefly, and I am going to justify it in the following ways:

1) If you put something dumb/wrong on the internet, it's fair game for picking on. No one made you do it and it's not my fault you didn't fact-check.

2) I've chosen my targets more or less at random.

3) I am not going to "out" anyone I pick on because I am not a complete asshole.

I googled "skinny margarita" and clicked on one of the first results. The first paragraph read something like "According to [some bartender], your average margarita contains about 330 calories, and maybe more if you use store-bought mix."

I face-palmed myself like seven times, just reading that one sentence, the reasons for which I will explain later on. But let us keep reading.

The author then shares a few tips for making your big ol' fatty margarita more diet-friendly. Namely:

1) Using fresh-squeezed lime juice, because it's low-calorie and tastes better.

2) Ditching those unnecessary sugary "modifiers" (ie, triple sec). Remember, you can always add a squeeze of fresh orange juice! :D

3) Use agave nectar instead of simple syrup - it's 20% fewer calories! :D

4) Better yet, get rid of the sugar altogether by using--wait for it--SPLENDA (I shit you not) instead.

It took a lot of self-discipline at this point to continue reading and not hurl my laptop against the wall.

Now we come to the author's "Skinny Margarita" recipe itself:

• 2 ounces tequila
• 1.5 ounces fresh lime juice
• 1 ounce agave nectar

220 calories, folks! Whew! That extra 110 was *definitely* not worth walking, like, a whole MILE over. Or switch the agave out for Splenda for a very demur 140 calorie cocktail & save yourself nearly two miles.

She goes on to suggest other margarita recipes which are in fact not margaritas at all. I can't even talk about those.

Then there's this mess, which I don't even have the words for:

In response, another dieter was all like, "Yeah, I replaced the Diet 7-Up with lime-flavored tonic water, cuz it just feels like fewer calories that way." I am not making this up.

This is probably what hell is like. I mean, not like the Southern Baptist (I can say that because I was raised one), eternal damnation, lake-of-fire hell, but like the Dante-esque, highly-philosophical-and-ironic hell. Fourth circle, maybe. But I suppose that's what a 74 calorie cocktail gets you.

In light of all that, I want to share with you some facts about margaritas and cocktails in general.

1) Cocktails involve booze. Booze has calories. I can't deal with people who act shocked about the number of calories in a cocktail for the same reasons I can't deal with people who write exposés about how fast food is bad for you. FREAKING DUH.

2) If you're going to drink a cocktail, effing own it and DRINK A COCKTAIL. If a few hundred calories mean that much to you, have a lime and soda. Or split one with some friends. Or SOMETHING that doesn't cause your bartender to die a little inside because you just effing walked into a bar and asked for a Skinny Margarita. (Even if it's on the menu, I guarantee you this will still happen.)

3) If you ever come to my house and I offer you a cocktail and you ask me to put Splenda in it, you are dead to me. Just go.

4) While there are some variations on the recipe for a basic margarita, it has three basic ingredients: a) tequila, b) orange liqueur, & c) lime juice. A dash of agave nectar (usually substituted for part of the orange liqueur) to cut the tartness of the lime is acceptable. A freaking OUNCE (as per our lady's "skinny" recipe) is not. If it's boozy lime-flavored Kool-Aid you want, then own it and don't order a margarita. I've been to plenty of bars & restaurants where they add in or substitute all kinds of weird & interesting things & call it some kind of [blank] margarita, and many of them have been very interesting and tasty. But the fact is that if you don't use tequila, orange liqueur, & lime juice, or if you start adding extra stuff in, it's not a margarita anymore. So eff this "lose-the-triple-sec-splash-of-fresh-orange-juice" business right in the ear.

5) Let's examine the caloric content of a properly made margarita. Here's how we make them at home:

• 2 ounces tequila. Tequila has ~65 calories per ounce, so we're at about 130 right there.
• 1 ounce lime juice. Lime juice is basically water with a very small amount of acid and sugar, so maybe ~7 calories per ounce.
• .75 ounce triple sec (or, lately, Creole Shrubb). An ounce of triple sec has ~125 calories, so say 94.
• .25 ounce agave nectar. ~80 per ounce, so say 20.

(For the sake of completeness, here - mix all ingredients together in a shaker with a goodly number of ice cubes, shake until you can't feel your hands, and double strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice.)

This makes for a DELICIOUS cocktail and runs about 282 calories, only about 60 more than the "skinny" recipe above. Allow me to gently point out that if 60 calories are worth a shitty cocktail to you, then you're probably better off skipping the adult beverages altogether & having a delicious, low-calorie mocktail. (I'm not being sarcastic here - they do exist and I make them semi-regularly.)

6) Skinny business aside, note that "nasty disgusting pre-mixed vaguely lime-flavored syrup" is not listed in the ingredients above. It is not the fault of margaritas that you're putting that shit in your drinks. The number of calories in sugar syrup has nothing to do with margaritas at all.

Just for kicks, I looked up the ingredients for a popular brand of margarita mix. Ahem: "Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Sodium Benzoate, Cellulose Gum, Gum Acacia, Polysorbate 60, Natural Flavors, Glycerol Ester of Wood Rosin, Sodium Metabisulfate, Yellow 5, Blue 1." Is that what you want in your drink? Really? It's like a billion calories/grams of sugar/ooky chemicals AND it tastes shitty. It's a lose-lose, people.

Articles & recipes like this bug me because I think they speak to a larger issue re: our dysfunction with food as a society (or at least large segments of it). I am all about trying to eat and cook healthier most of the time, but personally I think this is best done by using fresh, unprocessed ingredients as much as possible, asking yourself whether the four pounds of cheese / butter / oil / etc. in the original recipe is really necessary (sometimes they are!), and having smaller portions of delicious, well-made food. I am NOT about trying to make food as artificially low-calorie as possible by using abominations like low-fat cheese and artificial sweeteners just so I can eat nine servings of it & not feel bad. And when I have a craving for something rich and decadent (like a cocktail, fancy dessert, or authentic Southern cooking), I believe in doing one of two things: 1) having and enjoying it in all its glory, or 2) owning that the calories are more important to me at that particular point in time & having something else.

And don't even get me started on this:

For a cocktail nerd, this is nothing short of blasphemy. A friend emailed the link to me earlier this week with the subject line "Angela-baiting." The first part of my response is not fit for polite conversation. The second part was, "Kill it with fire."

And now if you'll excuse me, I have to go make a real, genuine, non-food-dysfunctioned big-girl cocktail.

With Great Power...

...comes great responsibility. I like to remind myself of this fact every time I write a blog post. And by "great power," I mean the power I have to look/sound like a complete idiot/asshole/moron/some other flavor of undesirable to strangers by writing things on the internet. Earlier today I wrote a bitchy/moany/whiney post, then re-read it this evening & deleted it because *I* found it annoying and that is never a good sign. You're welcome, future self.

Instead, I just have some Things to share. (I am not blogger-chic/-trendy enough to choose a number that starts with the same phoneme as the day of the week, so apologies for that. Frankly, I'm not totally clear on what day of the week it even is right now, so maybe it's just as well.) I will warn you ahead of time that they might not have much of a "thesis" or "point" or "basic coherency" or any of those other mainstream fancy pants writin' conventions that the Elitist Establishment is always pushing. That's life sometimes. Or blogging. Or whatever.

1) First, on the off chance that you don't read this girl's blog, then OMG you really must start. While I enjoy reading many, many blogs for a myriad of different reasons, I read Shelby's mainly because it never fails to crack me right the hell up and there aren't too many blogs that I find legitimately, consistently hilarious in a way that comes across as completely genuine and natural. Seriously. This is the case even when it's not a "funny" post. (Also she is a baddass of a runner.)

Today (or at least sometime recently) she wrote a post called "Two Things I Don't Get," and as I read it I found myself nodding in enthusiastic agreement and having that "OH THANK GOD IT'S NOT JUST ME" moment of relief you have when you really just can't believe it's just you, but no one else is saying anything, and you don't want to say anything either because you don't want to sound like an asshole. According to my calculations, though, even if people think that Shelby is an asshole for writing it out loud and I am an asshole for agreeing with her out loud, then the total asshole-perception is divided equally between the two of us, so people will think that each of us is only half as much of an asshole as they would have thought we were otherwise. And that is better.

(Update - About a billion people have now left comments on Shelby's post being like OMG ME TOO THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS, so the way I figure, each of our total perceived assholery is given by the equation A_p = (A_t/n) where A_p = how much the blogosphere perceives any one person to be an asshole for saying these things out loud, A_t = how much the blogosphere would think ONE person was an asshole for saying them, and n is the total number of people who say or agree with them. Fields Medal, please.)

Get it? It's a dust buster, which sucks? The amount of effort I put into finding this image is about equivalent to how pleasant my runs have been lately.

2) The title of my original whiney/bitchy post was going to be "This Week Sucks." (Subtle, no?) But then I remembered that as a denizen of the run-blogging world, I should take special care never to be too negative lest I discourage and depress others. Yet I also hear that I should be careful never to get TOO sunshine-and-unicorns about my running when it is going well, because that is apparently equally off-putting and not gritty and "real" enough, and people have totally stopped reading blogs over it. Obviously I work *extremely* hard to ensure that my blog has precisely the right balance of peppy, enthusiastic posts to gritty, "real" ones, and I feared that one entitled "This Week Sucks" may have been a bridge too far in one direction.

But for reals, y'all, this week sucks. I haven't had a good run since my track workout Tuesday a week & a half ago. Ever since then I've been completely exhausted, super low on stamina (ie, the last couple miles of a six mile easy run feels like the last miles of a marathon), or dealing with some kind of physical pain significant enough to harsh my mellow. And that's when I've been able to run at all.

Part of this I'm sure was jumping from ~20 mpw to nearly 40 in one week. Part of it has probably been not sleeping enough. Part of it is also probably that I keep forgetting that Sparring Night at the dojo (ie, advanced practitioners from a variety of martial disciplines show up & fight for two hours) is more or less equivalent to a hard 10K in terms of the physical wear & tear on my body. I'm pretty sure I've lost about 20 potential miles to that alone. On the other hand, my sparring is not great and I have a freaking black belt test somewhere in the not-too-dim-&-misty future, so you know. Trade-offs.

But still. I've been bummed that I can't run as much/well as I've wanted too lately & that takes its toll on my mood.

3.Once upon a time there was a run-blogger who was like, "What's up with all the BLACK running tights? Is this is a freaking FUNERAL? An East Coast social event? Why is that the ONLY color of running tights that anyone ever wears?" Then she got super bold & ordered a pair of slate gray running tights & thought they were SUPER cool.

Then she went for a run in them & finally understood why people pretty much only ever wear black running tights.

I took a picture. Then I chickened out & decided I don't have the guts to post said picture on the internet. (See opening line above.) So I deleted it. Let's just say that there is a sweating issue that happens and there is a certain pattern to it and it is not pretty in a color where you can actually see it.

It kind of reminded me of that time that group of dude cyclists went with the red shorts. Not because of all the genitals, but more because it reminded me to appreciate the general forgivingness / camouflage properties of black when it comes to spandex.

I'm sorry. Or you're welcome. Or y'know. Whatever.

Race Report: SF PrideRun 2012

Location: San Francisco, CA (Golden Gate Park

Date: Late June (June 23, 2012 this year, at the end of SF Pride Week)

Price: $30 by June 15, $35 after (same price for both races)

Deadline: 6/20 to register online; race day registration starting at 7:30.

Sellout Factor: Unlikely; it's a pretty small event.

Logistics

(Cribbing off of last year's race report)

Parking is plentiful & mere yards from the start. Bag check if you want it, but parking is so close & easy that I just left my stuff in my car. Free brunch post-race (which my co-worker Jimmy perennially helps prepare!) plus a few sponsor goodies (Fuze, chocolate milk, massages, See Jane Run coupons, & a dude giving out candy for spinning a wheel; I missed where he was from). Dj O Miestro was again spinning both before & after. (Which reminds me, I finally get all the "Call Me Maybe" references. Don't hate me, but I don't really see the appeal.) Park bathrooms super close to the start, plus a couple of extra port-a-potties near the finish.

The Course

Moderately hilly and USATF certified; mostly on roads & sidewalks, but there is one section going up JFK drive that's mostly dirt (and no small number of rocks, so look out for that). Actually, I don't know if I'd really call it 'hilly' so much as just not flat. It's nicely downhill in the 1st mile, then you get to spend the next mile slogging up that one stretch of JFK. It's not that it's particularly steep (maybe 3-5% grade? I'm bad at grades), just that it's a noticeable positive grade that goes on for a freaking mile. The third mile has a few modest, short ups & downs (and also one dramatic down). Last year the weather was perfect for running (55, overcast, & no wind); this year it was slightly warmer, but also sunny and beautiful.

My Race:

Here is a summary of my attitude about this race over the last few months:

January - WOOOO, I am super-pumped to race ANYTHING and EVERYTHING this year and I am TOTES RUNNING this AWESOME RACE again that I LOVED!!11!

May - Whew, I'm kind of worn out after 5 months straight of training / building mileage, but PrideRun will be a really good fitness gauge for me after chilling out for a bit in June.

June 9 - Oh hello, four jobs and zero time to run. How YOU doin'?

June 16 - I am totally not wasting money on a race that I am in no way prepared to run well in. Eff that noise.

June 18 - Ehhh....I should be a good sport and run it. It's for a good cause.

June 20 - I feel like crap.

June 22 - Double crap. Plus my legs hate me. But I should still be a good sport.

June 23, 7 a.m. - Someone just kill me. Hey, maybe the 5K will hasten my demise!

So that sealed it. I ate breakfast, threw on some running clothes, stopped to get enough cash to pay for the race, & drove to the polo fields. (Seriously, I felt completely hung over, and while that's never a good sign, it's a particularly bad one when you haven't been drinking.)

After registering, I was feeling thirsty & couldn't find water anywhere. Then I remembered I had soda water in my car, which made me feel a) less thirsty as well as b) more craptacular in the tummy region. After that I shuffled off on my warm-up. No sooner had I turned on my Garmin than it began flashing a LOW BATTERY warning at me.

Really? Et tu, Garmin? I charged you last night specifically because I knew you were out of battery. Argh. (Does the number of potential points of failure in the Garmin 305 power supply system strike anyone else as a little absurd?)

Fine. I jogged my mile & a half (more or less) Garmin-free, & figured I'd use the last little bit of charge to make sure I set a reasonable, non-death-inducing pace in the first half mile of the race.

My warm-up sucked, by the way. While I stretched, I brooded about how I'd been so excited to run the 10K here last year and how little enthusiasm I'd been able to muster today. Poor, poor Angela. Your life is a hard one.

New for this year at PrideRun were--TA-DA!!--pacing corrals! By which I mean boxes drawn on the ground with chalk & labeled with paces. To stand in (on?) the first corral, your mile pace only had to be sub-7, which I was still pretty confident I'd be able to do. In addition to maybe 10 dudes, there was only one other woman in that corral, so I figured I'd maybe just try to keep her in sight.

(Do you want to know what I was thinking as they counted down to the gun? "When this is over, I am sooooo going back to bed." Not kidding.)

The horn went off and it became abundantly clear that I would not be keeping the other corral 1 woman in sight, at least for now. She was past me & gone in 30 seconds. On the other hand, no other women passed me, so I just tried to find the men that were going about my speed & stick with them.

Using the Garmin to set up my pace proved tricky since the first mile was downhill, so I ignored it until we got to the uphill section and I went from seeing numbers in the 5:30s to ones in the 7:15+ range. This was equally unhelpful, so I resigned myself to pretty much running by effort for the rest of the race.

By the time I was most of the way up that hill, I was remembering vividly how much it had SUCKED last year & how sad I'd been about the fact that I had to run it again (10K does two laps of the 5K course), and feeling soooooo glad I was running the 5K instead this year. But I was also starting to feel new levels of physical terrible-ness, and won't deny that there was a tiny voice inside of me going "Maybe we could just stop here & go home? I mean, actually finishing races is kind of passe...". Another woman passed me on JFK, but at that point there was no question of trying to speed up & chase after her. I'd have to get her later or not at all. And truly, I thought I was doing pretty well, all things considered, to be 2/3 of the way through the race & only have two women ahead of me.

In that last mile, all I wanted to do was finish strong. I caught up to the hill passer & stayed right with her for a while, but soon she started to drop behind me so I was solidly in second again. I ran, you know, hard-ish, but was definitely not trying to kill myself and definitely not feeling up to the whole last-10%-of-the-race-kick-it-into-5th-gear thing. When I rounded the last corner & saw 21:30 on the clock, I more or less just coasted in, since finishing under 22:00 had been the closest thing to a goal I'd had going into it. (My official time was 21:36, just *barely* squeaking in under a 7:00 pace!)

Unfortunately, the impression of "just coasting in" was not the one I gave. My stomach had been unhappy pretty much the whole race, and as soon as I crossed the line I could feel myself about to dry heave. There may or may not have been just a teensy bit of projectile vomiting in the finish chute. This brings my finish line heaving streak up to 2.

I knew I'd been second overall; then, sure enough, it turned out the chick who beat me was in my age group, so second in the F 30-39 group as well. As I've noted over and over again, the thirty-somethings can hustle! (I think she was maybe 21:10ish, so it was nice to find out I hadn't been epically crushed.)

The Moral of This Story:

1) When you are under-trained, in less-than-great shape, and feeling shitty, you should *definitely* crash that race you were feeling iffy & unenthusiastic about, because you will probably podium.

2) Sometimes races surprise you. Even once I was in the car on the way to the race, I was still having trouble figuring out why I felt so strongly that I should run it, even given all the circumstances. I kept coming back to "I should be a good sport and not be a diva who insists on only racing when I know I'm in top shape." But I couldn't figure out why I felt that way until later.

Honestly, I think it's because I always get something out of racing. Sometimes something surprising. Today, what I got out of it was an appreciation for how far I've come even in the last two years. In August 2010, I gave 110% on a completely flat course when I was well-trained and feeling great and got a PR of 22:00. Today, in June 2012, I ran under-trained and feeling terrible on a tough course with basically no Garmin and coasted the last half mile or so for a 21:36 finish. Just imagine -- if I hadn't run the Big Bear 5K in May, this would've been a new PR! Now that is kind of awesome.

Goodies

I didn't pre-register so I didn't get the sweet logo tech shorts or the neon orange drawstring goody bag (stuffed with samples & coupons, of course), but they looked pretty awesome. You can kind of see them here:

I doubt I would've worn the shorts much (I'm really picky), but I really like the shirt from last year so if there was a shirt again I would probably pre-register.

Like last year, lovely medals three deep in each age/gender group by decade as well, plus a little extra swag for top three male/female overall.

For coming in second, I got gift cards for Road ID & See Jane Run, & also $50 cold hard cash, which recoups my reg fee plus $15. This race also brings my winning-practical-things streak up to 2, which is a little more exciting & classy than the other streak I mentioned.

Yes, the course is kind of tough, but I really like this event and I will probably run it again in the future (hopefully in better shape next time). :)

Marathon Training, Week 3: In Which I Attempt Eating & Drinking On The Run

I'm not in the habit of carrying fluids or energy / nutritional supplements when I run. People often seem surprised by this. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying I don't find it pleasant to be able to quench my thirst during a run. On the other hand, I am a lazy ass muthaf**** and will do pretty much anything to avoid carrying things in my hands while I'm running.

Sometimes it's unavoidable. I used to pin my house keys to my shorts when I ran in the neighborhood. Then one night the safety pin managed to pop open at some indeterminate point during my first couple of miles & the keys went flying into oblivion. Once I realized they were gone, the only thing I could think of to do was run to my boyfriend's house, borrow his roommate's computer to log in to my email and find my roommate's phone number (because seriously, why would I know that??), leave her a message using his phone, wait for her to call back, then run to the bar where she was to borrow her keys so I could get into the house & then make new copies in the morning. Sheesh. To this day, unless I have a zipper pocket, I carry those bitches IN MY HAND. And even then I periodically check that they're still there. At a few smaller races with no sweat check I've also run holding my car fob.

Most of the time, though, I can get away without carrying anything very big. On a reasonably cool day, I can run eight or ten miles without water as long as I down a couple of glasses before I go. I'm not saying I'm not thirsty when I get back, but not that miserable, cotton-mouth-ey, boy-that-stranger's-garden-hose-sure-does-look-tempting kind of thirsty. If I'm on a longer run than that, Golden Gate Park is likely involved in some capacity, and there are enough water fountains there to keep me from reaching the afore-described level of thirst.

The concept of ingesting something non-liquid during a run is a foreign concept to me. On my first-ever half marathon, I carried a package of jelly beans in a little fanny pack (don't judge). For every one I managed to get into my mouth, probably at least three or four ended up on the ground. Plus they made my stomach feel kind of funny. On every half since then I haven't bothered to carry anything & just made sure to eat a solid, carb-ey breakfast & grab some Gatorade (or whatever) at every aid station. That's always worked out pretty well for me.

Of course, a marathon is a different story so I am going to have to get this drinking / feeding myself while running situation handled sometime in the not-too-dim-and-misty future. Hence a trip to Sports Basement, where a hand-held water bottle and various packages of gelatinous substances were purchased. (Full disclosure -- I didn't actually purchase the Gu Roctane; those, I won in a giveaway from the inestimable Rad Runner, along with some tasty, tasty nuun & a few packs of Gu Chomps. The flavor was peach tea, which sounds weird but was actually quite good!)

I won't embarrass myself by telling you how much time I spent staring blankly at the racks and tubs of water bottles of every conceivable shape, size, and price. Eventually, I'd examined enough of them to figure out what features I wanted (compact, hands-free top/nozzle/sucker/thing, roomy zipper pouch, key ring clip, reasonable price). Unfortunately, it seems as if the hand-strap water bottle industry has yet to create a product that meets my requirements. So I settled for the Camelbak one, which, although it's a little taller and the zipper pouch isn't quite as roomy (maybe two gels' worth at most), does have the hands-free top, the key ring clip, and was only $16.00 (which I still think is a rip-off but what are you going to do).

Friends, I have to say that I just don't know how this hand-held situation is going to work out for me. I've taken the bottle on three runs so far, just to get some practice holding & drinking from it -- an easy run last Monday (6), my MP run last Thursday (2 wu + 7 MP), & my long run Sunday (14). When it's full I feel like I'm trying to run with a dumbbell in one hand. I have to tense some of the muscles in my arm to support its weight, which really throws off my upper body form (I can feel my shoulders twisting back and forth, which is really bad). Also, drinking out of it while I'm moving has been extraordinarily difficult -- I have to slow down considerably to actually get anything out of it. (Then again, this could just be lack of coordination on my part. It wouldn't be the first time...)

I'm also not sure how great it is for me to have unfettered access to fluids at all times. I feel like a lot of the time I'm just drinking out of it because it's there, not because I'm actually thirsty. I feel like this could very quickly lead to a sloshy stomach, emptying the bottle within a few miles, and/or needing a pee break (which I'm hoping to avoid).

I'm not sure if ingesting gels really counts as "eating," but I took two Gu's with me on my Sunday long run as an experiment in logistics & digestion -- one Tri-berry and one Jet Blackberry. I was going 14 miles so I decided for no particular reason to eat one at five miles and one at ten miles. (As I suspected, those two Gu's barely fit into the bottle's zipper pouch, and I still couldn't close it all the way.)

The good news: I did manage to get both packages open & to get just about all of their gelatinous contents into my mouth & down into my stomach without stopping or making a giant mess.

The bad news: I cannot tell you how appalled I was at the texture / flavor of that stuff. Oh my god. WHY DID NONE OF YOU WARN ME??? (Boy that sounds a bit tawdry out of context...)

You know what it tasted like? Faintly berry-flavored chocolate ganache. Now, I've got no beef with chocolate ganache, but it is NOT at the top of the list of things I want to taste while running. EW.

Clearly, there is no God. I just can't believe that a just, benevolent deity could allow such a disgusting substance to exist in the world. (Seriously; I almost choked, stumbled, & spit it out onto the ground. Probably only the knowledge that I paid a freaking buck twenty-five for it kept it in.)

The first one seemed to sit fine in my stomach once I washed the tasted out of my mouth. I managed to choke down the second one at mile 10 for the sake of science, and that also seemed to go fine, so at the very least, I've learned that regular Gu agrees with my digestive system while I'm running well enough. I am hoping that some of the other flavors are less revolting, though.

So there you go. My first foray into on-the-run fueling / drinking. Next week: Will she give the dorky fuel belt a shot? Eh? Eh? (Hint: Only if I can look this awesome. Thanks for the pic, runningskirts.com!)

Shoe Review: Brooks Adrenaline GTS 11

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I'm trying out a new training shoe. After a couple of delays, I finally got them and have now had a chance to take them for a good half a dozen runs, including a long run, a tempo run, some track work, and a couple of easy runs. Here's my take on them so far.

Observation #1: They are effing HAWT. Telling you; there's just nothing like Speedybitch Red (tm) to make you feel fast and fabulous.

Observation #2: They feel stiffer than my Asics Kayanos (even compared to when they were new). I'm sure people can debate whether this is a good or bad thing, but the uppers definitely felt more like they were holding my foot in a specific position.

Observation #3: The mid-soles feel stiffer (ie, less cushion-ey) and there is noticeably more arch support. (I wonder if this is has anything to do with why Dr. Saxena put them on his list of recommended running shoes in the stability category.)

Observation #4: The mid-soles also feel springier, which makes me wonder if indeed my Asics are shot for whatever reason, even though they have less than 400 miles on them.

Observation #5: I am always wary of assuming causation based on correlation, but I've had noticeably fewer shin splint issues in the last week and a half. Not zero, but just a little bit of mild, achey pain. No idea whether this has anything to do with the shoes (or if it's even possible for changing shoes to make a difference that fast), but I'll take it.

Observation #6: They're comfortable! This was the main thing I wondered about with regard to changing to a different shoe after so many years. I was afraid I might have gotten so used to my Asics that something new would seem uncomfortable just because it was different. So far, though, that has not been the case; once I got past that first paranoid test run, the Brooks felt great.

Observation #7: The part that wraps around the back of your heel is red, so that when you try out a new pair of running socks and they turn out to be too low-cut and you rub a giant bloody hole in the back of your heel, the bloodstains blend right in. Ha-ha.

I'm trying to add a little more mileage this week since my legs have felt so good, so we'll see how the Brooks hold up. I can't tell you how exciting it will be for me if I can get up to over 30 miles per week and stay there for a while without getting injured -- it's been a while. (It would also bode well for this marathon I keep debating...) :)

This Is How I'm Gross

One running problem I have not solved since moving in with my boyfriend a year and a half ago is what to do with disgusting, dripping wet clothes after a run. When I lived in my own place, there was this bizarre not-a-wall structure between the front door and the living room that, as far as I could tell, served no real function, so I co-opted it as a clothes drying rack. (You can kind of see the not-a-wall in this picture -- try to ignore the gross polo injury; I tried to find a less disgusting picture of the not-a-wall, but apparently I didn't take many pictures in that apartment. Then again this whole post is about being nasty so maybe it kind of fits.)

A Nasty Parable (to set the tone):
Friends come over and immediately notice all the damp running / riding clothes draped over the not-a-wall.
Friend: "Oh, is your dryer broken?"
Me, belatedly: "Don't touch that."
Moral: Don't be a bad friend & leave your stank out where your friends might accidentally come into contact with it.

There is no such structure anywhere in our house. Even if we had such a structure, I feel fairly confident that Don would veto the displaying of damp, stinky running clothes in public areas like that. (I have a lot less shame (read: social grace) than he does.) Even in non-public areas, though, there's no good place for hanging damp clothes to dry so they don't mildew in the hamper. I'm not arguing that this is a difficult problem to solve; just pointing out that I haven't solved it yet, so it is still a problem.

The default "solution" is that my bedroom floor is primarily used as a surface for spreading out wet workout clothes to dry:



While I will admit that this is totally gross, it's maybe not quite as totally gross as it sounds. Before I moved in with Don, I lived on my own for four years, during which time I had accumulated too much stuff and furniture not to need a separate room for it. (Don would not tolerate this for a SECOND if we had only one bedroom.) While it's technically my "bedroom," it mostly gets used for storage, so it's not like we're walking around in there a lot.

Except when we are. I went in there Tuesday morning to get dressed (my clothes live in that room) and possibly toss some now-dry workout clothes into the hamper; in the process of picking my way through the minefield of sweaty disgusting, my foot brushed against the top I ran in on Sunday evening.

(Right: Don has a vinyl desk chair that he uses to solve the damp workout clothes problem. Vinyl = not gross to get sweat on, as long as no one else has to sit in it. He is definitely the classy one in this relationship.)

It was still wet. Not like kind-of-damp and/or moist; like squishy, sopping WET.

My first thought: SICK.

My second set of thoughts: Wait a minute. That's from thirty-six hours ago. Shouldn't it really be dry by now?

Could it be that my running-fu has evolved to the point that my sweat no longer obeys the laws of physics?

What other mystical properties might my sweat have acquired?

My third thought: Girl, you are NASTY and your living conditions would make your grandmother weep bitter tears of defeat and disgust. Get thee to Target / IKEA / The Container Store / whatever and get yourself some of this action:



We're talking like $35.00 here. This is not rocket science.

Seriously. What is *wrong* with me people?