This past Saturday was the 20th running of the Earth Day Half Marathon. After 19 years of the race starting and finishing at St.Cloud State University, this year's event moved to downtown with the start and finish at River's Edge Convention Center. I'm not sure how many of the 20 races I've done, but I'm pretty sure it is more than half of them. Over the years the course has changed slightly, but this year was quite different. With any change, there are always going to be upsides and downsides. These are purely my opinions, but I'd list these as upsides of the new course and venue:
Here are a few downsides that I noticed:
Overall the race went well. More specifically, the first 10 miles were great and the last 5K was a struggle. I was averaging a nice 8:47 per mile until mile 10. The last bit was a solid minute per mile slower. Yikes! Afterward, I was looking at the data my Garmin app gives me and noticing some of the data. Here is part of it: While we continued to look at the data, my son pointed out that there is such as thing as data overload. Some of the numbers my Garmin app gives me are pretty irrelevant to anything such as how many calories I might have burned in a particular mile. One thing we did notice, however, is that while my pace dropped, my heart rate did not. David said, "You were doing the work, just not getting the results." That made me feel a little better that data showed I was doing the work! With so much data, it's maybe best to grab a few bytes of data and spend more time running while less analyzing numbers. Deb was able to run a few miles until she took a tumble while checking her phone. Since she escaped with only a few scrapes, I can give her a hard time to look up while running. My friend Lorrie is using the run/walk method and finished her race at a nice steady rate. She is also doing the half at Grandma's in June, so it was a great start for her. Stephanie's husband is training for the Fargo Marathon and opted to jump into the race on Saturday for a nice training run complete with water stops and traffic control. He had a very nice race finishing in 1:52. Here we are before the start of the race. I committed the cardinal sin of race day outfits and wore a new shirt. Thankfully, I wasn't punished too much for that and got only a slight chafe under one arm. Since it had been cold up until race day, I guess my only opportunity to test drive the tank shirt would have been on the treadmill. I'm hoping the weather will warm up enough to wear tanks soon. I did a short run this morning in pouring rain...back to jackets and tights already.
Next up is the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon as part of the Grandma's Marathon weekend races, June 22 in Duluth, MN. I'm going back into a similar training program I used for Earth Day using the last nine weeks. One thing I did notice looking at my training data was that my weekly mileage has been averaging around 27. In past training cycles, I tried to stay in the 30-35 mile range, so after resting some this week to recover, I'm going to kick up my mileage slightly. It is very important not to add too much mileage too quickly, but jumping up to 30 miles per week is only a 10% change, so very realistic. Happy Earth Day to the Earth and all its inhabitants and Happy Running--Missee
1 Comment
People often say that there are two things you can be certain of...death and taxes. Tomorrow is tax day across the country, so if you haven't done your income taxes yet, time to hustle! We owed the State of MN and got a refund from the federal return and it's all been processed. It's always good to have that out of the way for another year. Without a mortgage, we are also responsible for sending in our own real estate taxes as well. Stearns County has this awesome auto-pay program for those that we got set up for 2019, so our taxes get paid by the due date straight out of an account we set up for taxes and insurance. Tax day always makes me think of where that tax money is going. As far as property taxes, I usually feel like we are getting a pretty good bargain. Our local schools are good, the streets are in good general repair (although the city declined to plow or clean the bike paths on the April snow this week) and our police/fire service seems to be very good. On the income taxes, I'm not always sure the government makes good use of their funds, especially when they fail to get budget bills done in a timely manner causing government shut-downs. I don't think many would disagree with me on this. Besides taxes, that other certainty in life is death. Last weekend at Mass, they announced that a longtime professor had passed away. She was a super tough instructor in the English department of which my husband is an alum. She was so tough that the kids took a small play on her name to dub her "Doctor Death." She was an elderly woman who had lived a long full life so we didn't feel too bad getting a small chuckle that Doctor Death had indeed died. My English teacher husband said that "the irony was not lost on me." Doctor Death would have been so proud that he can correctly identify irony. On to my two best purchases! Before quilt camp, we had discussed the probability that there would be a lot of mud at camp and each found some cute rain boots. I have gotten almost too much good wear out of these boots. First, I wore them to the track meet last weekend. It was a pretty chilly meet, so I can't say my feet were particularly warm, but they were dry. Instead of lovely April weather, here is what we got this week. And this photo was taken when it had improved enough to do a late start for school on Friday. I drove my husband's 4-wheel-drive truck and wore my rain boots. I've been wearing my flowery boots everywhere...taking the dog out, work, yoga and even out to lunch. I refuse to get out the Sorels...it's spring and I will wear spring boots. They have definitely been a great purchase! My second awesome purchase was of course the treadmill. When the weather turned nasty on Thursday, I didn't fret a bit. I thought to myself that if it's not suitable outdoors for running, I have a good second option and I'm going to take it. Of course, when I go to the treadmill, I get a visitor. Pretty soon, he wants to hold his stuffed hedgehog over the treadmill belt so I can toss it for him. Since that seems awfully dangerous for me, when it's time to jump on, the toys go here: There are actually three hedgehog toys around the house. The first one was a gift from Mom and Dad who always include Charlie on their holiday gift list. Charlie loved it so much that the toy has required many "surgeries" so I bought a spare. Both of them continued to need repairs so I picked up a third in case one needs to be retired. He really doesn't play much with anything else. I feel like one of those moms who needed to keep two blankies in rotation for their toddlers. None of my kids ever got attached like that to any toy or blanket, and I always kind of wanted them to, so I get it now with a fur baby.
It's a mere six days until the Earth Day Half Marathon. I've completed every long run and done a fair amount of speed work. I am as ready as I can hope to be although always a little uncertain how a race will go after not running one since the Snowflake Shuffle in early December. I've taken a good look at the course map as they decided to change it up for the 20th anniversary of the race. It appears that the grass downhill that nearly everyone detested on the old course has been removed and the hill that formerly climbed into mile 10 will now be a downhill at mile 7. It should be fun! Wish me luck and I'll be sure to update the blog after the race. For last minute registrations, check the website: Earth Day Half Marathon. Happy running! Missee Have you ever arrived home to find a package from one of your go-to online stores only to completely blank on what could be in the package? I'll admit this has happened before and it's sort of like "Merry Christmas!" when I open the package to find out what is inside. Well, yesterday I arrived home to find a quite large Kohl's box on my front step. I had NO idea what it could be as I haven't ordered anything from them for a while. I then tried to think back to Christmas shopping to recall if anything had been back ordered and forgotten. Hmmm...nothing came to mind. In the meantime, I collected Charlie and took him up and down the block to take care of business and stopped at the mailbox to see what might be there. To my surprise, along with the regular mail was a soft envelope from Kohl's. What could be in these packages??? I carried everything upstairs and cracked open the box. Imagine my surprise when I looked inside and saw this: It was a LOT of sports bras. Twenty nine (29) of them in fact. There were at least four different styles and sizes ranging from small to 42DD. One particular style, I received 10 each in medium and large, all in the same color of blue. I then opened the envelope to find yet another sports bra, 30 in total. I am in need of some new undergarments and had been browsing a few sites online to look, but had not ordered any. Even if I had, what person would be so clueless on their size to order everything from small to 42DD? And if I were looking for a new style, why order 10 of the same color? After sending the above photo to Stephanie to commiserate/laugh with me, I tried to figure out what was going on. I logged into my Kohls.com account to see if I'd been charged for these bras and saw that I had an order placed on my account at 6:16 last Saturday morning and a charge for $1057.00! All of our blog readers would know that there was no way I'd be online shopping at 6:15 on a Saturday morning...unless I was on the treadmill. After a few more good laughs between my husband and I, we packed up the large box and loaded it into the truck to return these boulder-holders ASAP. When I arrived at Kohl's, after they said "Oh, my!" and called a manager, the staff did say this isn't the only bizarre package they'd returned lately. Apparently, someone is somehow trying to place large orders and access the Kohl's cash before the cardholder figures it out. I was fortunate...until we got done returning the 30 bras and the clerk said that $690 would be going back on my Kohl's card. WHAT!?! My order total said $1057. That's when we looked closer and apparently I have two more shipments coming with a dozen more sports bras. NOOOOO!!!!!
A few things about this experience make me a little more than a little upset.
While 45 sports bras may provide an unprecedented level of support, fraud, scams and identity theft can leave the consumer feeling exposed, frustrated and exhausted, perhaps like you've landed in a big booby trap. Have you ever had anything unusual happen like my bizarre brassier bonanza? Have you ever had a package arrive and couldn't remember what you ordered? What was inside? Feel free to share in the comments! I'll be getting out for a 10-miler Saturday morning before heading out to a track meet for the day and then waiting for the rest of my bras to come so that I can get back in line at customer service. Happy running--Missee P.S. This is what I arrived home to today...13 more sports bras. I hope this wraps up my tale... |
AuthorMissee and Stephanie are two Minnesota sisters and moms who love to run. We are not experts in running, parenting or anything else, but we do have years of experiences that may be helpful or entertaining to others. Archives
May 2020
Categories |