Gear!

Hooray!  I got paid yesterday, and it feels excellent.  I paid my parents back some of the money I owe them, sent a significant amount to Sallie Mae for my student loans, and put some into my savings account.  I registered both Kevin and myself for a Halloween-themed 5K coming up in a couple of weeks, and then I went out and grabbed myself some running goodies from Runners Hi in Aiea.

Top priority was a new pair of shoes.  The ones I've been using so far are about 3 years old, and even though I haven't really been keeping track of the miles on them I feel like they're probably at least approaching 500.  So I got some new ones!  These are Brooks Adrenaline, which apparently are the most popular shoe Runners Hi sells.  They're comfy and fit well, and I can't wait to start training in them on Monday.  I also picked up a set of bungee thingos that are supposed to replace my laces and make my shoes into slip-ons.  I'm still thinking about whether or not I'll use them, but it might be nice to not have to worry about my laces coming untied.

I also grabbed a couple of energy gels.  Now that I'm starting to get into higher mileage on my long runs, whatever I eat for breakfast beforehand (usually a Kashi waffle with peanut butter and banana, btw) doesn't always carry me all the way through.  I've never had either of these brands before, but I was interested in the Ignite ones because they're all-natural and made of easily-identifyable ingredients, such as fig paste and juice concentrate.  I got them in wildberry, blackberry blueberry, and raspberry pomegranate flavors.  I got the Honey Stinger ones completely because they're pink lemonade flavor.

Body Glide!  A runner's best friend.  I still have a scar from a chafe welt I got during my first marathon.  Hopefully we can avoid those this time around.

I'm so excited for this one!  It's a Nathan brand hydration backpack.  I'm starting to get to the point where I need to drink during my runs.  Today I was able to stop at a 7-11 and grab a Powerade, but I know that won't always be possible.  This thing will hold 2L of water, plus it has pockets where I can stick some energy gels and my ID and housekeys and whatnot.  The design of the water container is such that it opens completely at the bottom, making it easy to fill and clean.  It was expensive, about $85, so I had to think about it before I bought it but I'm glad I did.

In other news, I just finished week 5 of marathon training.  Today's run was 11 miles, which for me was noticeably harder than last week's 10-miler.  This might be related to the fact that I only got about 5.5 hours of sleep last night, though.  It's also seeming like the longer runs, the ones that are 10 miles or more, take a lot more out of me than expected.  I almost always sleep for a couple of hours afterwards, which eats up most of my Saturday.  I'm going to have to start planning for this and making room in my schedule for nap time :).