Running Chick

Earlier in the winter, after the first snow, Josh and I went on a short run where we both took some pretty good diggers slipping on the ice. I landed on my left knee, which ended up swollen and bruised.  I’ve been wearing Yak Trax for the past few winters.  They work great if you’re totally on packed snow, but once you hit pavement, they’re really uncomfortable. So, I was looking for traction alternatives. I was thinking about getting another pair of Yak Trax-ish things, but meh, they’re so expensive.  This year, I decided to go the cheap route and shoot screws my shoes.

After a little bit of intertube research, I decided that for my current winter shoe (Brooks Cascadia), the best screw would be a hex head 3/8” sheet metal screw.  $2.99 for a box of 100. CHEAP.

I put 10 screws in each shoe, so my total cost per shoe is a whopping $0.30.  These thing work great. My footing feels secure on all sorts of winter terrain with zero slipping or sliding around, and when I do hit pavement it doesn’t feel any different than if I were running screwless.  They are noisy though, which I was self conscious about at first, but then I noticed that people heard me coming and got out of my way, so bonus for that.

After about 50 miles, I was starting to notice I was doing a little more sliding than usual. I took a look at my screws and what do you know, I wore the dang things right down to the nub. Ha!

Josh reloaded my shoes and now I’m good for another 50 miles.

Onward with this week’s running recap. This was a cut-back week, so my total weekly mileage was just under 10.  Tuesday & Thursday were uneventful, but Saturday was really unpleasant.  Cold and HOLY COW windy, which made it even colder.  I ended up having to wearing my face mask, but it made my glasses fog up, so I had to take them off.  Without the glasses, the wind made my eyes water and my tears froze on my eyelashes so I couldn’t see. So, off came the facemask but then I ended up with wind burned cheeks.  I was looking like a hot mess, so of course I had to stop and take a picture:

Some lady complimented me on the “cute shade of green” of my jacket. I was mostly going for the most obnoxious color I could find but score one for me for picking one that’s cute and practical.

Next week my mileage jumps up to 12-13 with a long run of 6.5. Hopefully next Saturday will not be as icky as this Saturday.

Check out Pippen, he’s getting so big!

He’s certainly looking less like a kitten and more like an adult cat now that he finally grew into his head & ears. He still has a ways go to before he grows into his feet and tail. Seriously, he has the longest tail I’ve ever seen on a cat. As big as he is, he can still wrap it entirely around him when he sits.

He has all his adult teeth finally and I was able to save one of his baby teeth. I actually ended up having to pull it out for him because we were playing and he snagged it on my shirt and it ended up sideways in his mouth. There was a lot of blood and it was gross, but he seemed rather unfazed by the whole thing and was back to playing about two minutes after it was all over. I was definitely more traumatized than he was.

He and Scout are sort of getting along. Sometimes they play, but he tends to play too rough and she’s not that sort of lady so she growls, hisses and swats at him and that’s the end of that. I did catch them sharing the tree a few weeks ago. I’m not sure Scout was so happy, but Pippen was thrilled.

There wasn’t much room for him except on the very edge, she has a very womanly figure. She stared/glared at him for quite a while, he just fell asleep. Typical male.

Then she started to fall out of the tree asleep.

And then she finally curled up all the way. Aww, they’re BFFS!

But not really. Notice how she’s still glaring at him while pretending to sleep.

That was the last time I’ve seen them share the tree.  Pippen has pretty much taken over the tree and Josh felt bad for her, so now she has her very own kitty shelf on the front windows.

Not spoiled or anything. Nope.