Same Song, Different Beat

At the Turkey Trot 5K last November, I won a $10 gift certificate for a running store. It was about to expire, so last Friday I made a trek to the western suburbs to cash it in. I figured I could use it to buy a pair of mittens to wear over my gloves, like some of my running friends have.

I've never been to this store before and when I walked in was greeted by a friendly clerk. I told him what I was looking for and he had no idea what I was talking about. He tried to sell me something called a lobster claw, which is a mitten split in half. I said I'd look around some more.

As I hovered over the SmartWool display, a woman came over to help. I really have all the running clothes I need; I'm planning to move to California in a few months and won't have any need for much cold-weather gear. But I had this certificate, and I knew that colder temps were expected this week so I figured I'd buy a warmer shell.

I tried on lots of them, then settled for one that was on sale. It was still more than I was planning to spend, but with all the assistance I'd been getting I felt compelled to buy it. Yeah, I'm easy.

In the adjacent room were running shoes. I wandered in to get a closer look at one of the posters that was on the wall and when I turned around I saw the mittens I was looking for! I had been in the ski shop, the running shop was in the other room, with the shoes. OK. So now I have the mittens and the new top. Glad I saved $10. :-)

I washed the top that night and wore it Saturday morning for my run with the group. I signed up for a half-marathon training class, but I was the only one from that group to show up. My coach was there, but she was running with the marathon group. She gave me a map of the route and I was on my own.

The temperature that morning was 22 degrees, with 20 mph winds. But with my new duds, I was ready! I wore a thin long sleeve top from a past race, my new warm top, plus vest and jacket. I also wore wind pants over my leggings and, of course, my new mittens over my gloves. Wind--I scoff at you! Actually, I was overdressed and started to sweat. But it was too much hassle to unzip, since I was wearing mittens.

This was a new route for me, and it was nice to see something different. I ran on a trail, through a residential area. The roads were clear, although there was a little ice problem since the temperature on Friday was 40 degrees(!) and snow melted, then froze. On the way back I ran on a different trail, one that was limestone. I didn't encounter too many people along the way.

So another 5 miles in the cold. Not much different than last week's, except that I was alone. Since I didn't have my iPod, I was left to my thoughts. You know how you get a song in your head and it's all you can think about? This time it was Ravel's Bolero. So I used the drumbeat as my cadence.

EDIT: I'm trying to fix the layout so that it displays properly in IE7.