Marching

March, 2012: it was weird around here. It was just as warm as June or September usually is for about two weeks right in the middle of the month.

But that was mostly a good thing: I started riding my bike to work early this year, the week after we changed the clocks to what the Europeans call "summer time." (Stupid time changing. But that's another topic...)

RunKeeper tells me I've made 6 round trips to work on my bike this month. I swear I did 7, though: I must have forgotten to use the RunKeeper on one of my commutes that first week, because I swear I did 2 the first week, then 3, then 2 again. Apparently I only tracked one of those ones the first week, though. Maybe I didn't have enough battery power that day. I can't remember, it was a few weeks ago already.

Proud of this, though: I already cracked 40 minutes on one ride in this month.

Rock on.

 

Five Fingers

We went running again this morning. Just over 5 miles looping around our neighborhood.

The Vibram Five Fingers shoes are awesome. They're "barefoot" shoes -- super thin, snug, you can feel the ground with much more tactile sensation in your feet than typical heavily padded running shoes. It's like your fingers on a touch screen, your feet in the Five Fingers on the road.

We got them last fall, and we do not wear anything else on our feet to run anymore... just the Five Fingers. If you are a runner, and you have not tried these shoes yet, then you must!! What's stopping you? And if you're not a runner because of knee, hip, back or other impact related issues... try again with the Five Fingers -- they really make a difference: you don't land as hard in these shoes, so you don't hurt yourself as much.

Before we got the shoes, we were lucky to be able to run for a half hour or so before knees or backs were complaining too much. Now we can run for more than an hour, no problem. Now we wish we had more time to run... Before we thought 5k, no problem, maybe 10k at the most. Now we're thinking maybe a half or even full marathon might be in the cards for us down the road.

By the way: "Yay for spring!" too... We were warm enough today when we started out for the first time in months. Literally, I think the last time we were this warm was last fall, maybe in October. Very nice to finally be past this winter.