Running as a sign of the beast

I always log my miles, or at least the closest I can come to my actual miles. I like to look back and compare my runs to last week, last month, last year, many years ago. I know, major geek. That's one reason I went and got a Garmin, to be more exact in mileage. But I still use my paper log and round off my mileage to the nearest tenth.

After Saturday's run I added up my weekly mileage and then added it to my yearly mileage total. Look at that, this year I've run 666 miles. Niiiiice. A sure sign of the apocalypse. Or a sign that I need to run a lot more than I've been running. I'll never get over 1000 by the end of the year at this rate!

Saturday morning I planned to run about 6 miles, maybe a little more depending on how my legs felt and how hot it was. Taper, baby! I met up with the gang at the Lafayette-Moraga Trail; they were all running additional miles so they started early. Bree was doing a long run so she and Sandy had already run 6 miles by the time I got there; Olivia had run a whole bunch; Pam was running in from the Moraga end of the trail; Mary Ann had done a mile. I felt good when I started and we were going slowly, doing 4:1 for Bree.

Mary Ann turned around at 1.5 miles, carefully building back her mileage. The rest of us passed the 3 mile mark and I decided I'd go to the 4 mile mark and then turn around. Olivia turned back at 3 miles and Sandy went with her. Olivia had locked her keys in her trunk and Sandy turned back to call AAA; Sandy's 12 miles were more than she had originally planned. Pam, Bree and I continued on with Pam surging ahead and looping back for us.

Because I was feeling ok and we were going very slowly I decided I'd stay with Bree and go to the 5 mile mark with her. What a git, hmm? We got to the marker and Pam continued on while we headed back in the other direction. We briefly considered going with her and asking for a ride back to our cars but decided that would be wrong. We did a lot of walking on the way back; a combination of the miles and the heat were getting to us. We finally made it back to the beginning and yeah, I was sorry I had gone 4 miles more than planned. I'd be icing for sure when I got home.

My left leg is feeling -- not really sore, or pained, just wrong. I'm pretty sure that my diagnosis of crappy sandals is the correct one, instead of a problem with my running shoes. I've been icing my heel and sometimes my shin, and using the Foot Wheel on my foot and the Stick on my leg. That definitely has improved things and probably anti-inflammatories would work too but I forget to take them.

In the spirit of taking it easy we ran our regular Monday run on Monday morning. I knew we'd do a slightly longer than usual run, especially since Sandy was joining us, but I hadn't planned to run the hill route. Pam did though, and I wasn't about to wuss out and cry about it. We ran just short of 5 miles and I impressed the heck out of myself by running the entire hill. After I had told them I was walking and I'd meet them at the top. It was a good run even though we were all tired and hot and sweaty afterward. I'm glad we got it out of the way early.

The rest of my long holiday weekend was great. I finally went through and finished all of my filing and account reconciliations that had been sitting around and getting bigger for, oh, 5 or 6 months. So much for keeping up with it as I promised myself I'd do. I got lots of rest, read a lot and visited my friend who had his knee replaced. I went book shopping and really, I shouldn't be allowed in a bookstore. I'll only buy what I can carry in my arms but man, I can carry a lot. I had gone in specifically to try and find the next book in the series I'm reading but I couldn't resist browsing.

In addition to the running and all the other wonderful productive things I did this weekend I finished the Temescal Bag. Finished as in completely done knitting and felting. The only thing left is drying which should be quick in this heat. To reprise: I used double strands of Valley Yarns Northampton in black, red, light grey and dark grey (two skeins of this) with KnitPicks Options needles in 13. I completely ran out of the black and and red (thus the light grey in the second strap) and had very little left of the other colors. I did one extra increase on the base so it's a little larger than the first bag. I figure that's also why I ran out of the colors. I used the random stripe generator but had to adjust it toward the top because I ran out of black. The colors are off in the pictures, they blend together much better than it seems and in some lights the black and dark gray look alike.
Unfelted the bottom was 12"x12" with the bag 19.5" wide and 17.5" high. After running through the washer twice the bottom felted to 8.5"x9" with the bag 14.5" wide and 11.5" high. The straps went from 15.75" (doubled) to 13.75", much less shrinkage than I expected. I think that it may shrink just a bit more when it finishes drying. I'm hoping it gets lighter weight, it's pretty heavy now. For each cycle in the washer I used one of those color catcher sheets and it's a good thing since they were dark red after each cycle. The light grey probably would have ended up with some pink otherwise.

I'm very happy with the bag and it'll become my new knitting bag. I still need to trim the ends on the inside but I'll do that when it dries. Now I have to decide on my next project, something easy to carry on the plane to Erie this weekend.