"Gear" Run down

I put gear in quotes up there because basically, I have none. I have my lovely, wonderful New Balance shoes that I've had for years and which will undoubtedly need replacing if I truly get serious in the coming months. I have some cotton ankle socks, some running shorts (meeeeow!), a pair of cold weather running pants (i.e. my new best friends, thank you PDX weather), some sports bras. I also have an i-pod that is like a fifth limb to me, I seriously cannot leave the house without it, period. (More on that later.) My point is that I don't have a heart-rate monitor, or one of those fancy water belt deals that will turn me into a human camel, or even a stopwatch. I figure I'm going to give myself until the end of November (at which point I'll be up to 8 miles at a time) before I make any gear purchases. No point in spending my hard-earned lucre on things that may, for all I know, end up on the dusty Shelf of Rebecca's Failed Big Ideas along with 3 bolo ties, a pair of wooden clogs, half a home-brewing kit, an assortment of wigs, and 18 connected paper clips. But when some merchant does manage to pry a few crumpled bills from my miserly little claw, I will happily share the news and any opinion I form concerning such gear.



Digression: Writing the title made me think of that movie "The Run Down" with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (love that his real name is Dwayne, btw). Anyone seen that? It's one of those movies that looked bad in the previews and was in fact quite bad and yet...it had its moments. And those moments made forking over two hours of your life not such a rotten deal. Let's just say that watching a drugged out Rock be assaulted by angry jungle monkeys is just as funny as it sounds. Clearly, serious cinephiles should drop everything and flock to Movie Madness. Do it now! They close at 10!!



Okay, just remembered I was going to write about my i-pod. So when I used to trail run in college I didn't listen to music because the trails were rough so you needed to pay really close attention to your footing and music was too distracting. But since I've been running on ASS-phalt I've listen to my Fifth Limb non-stop because I tend to get bored out of my mind. However, as Hal (Higdon) told me wisely, if you are going to be outside running for hours, potentially in the dark and/or poor weather conditions, it's important not to space out and put yourself in danger (from drivers/scary dogs/creepy people). So I'm going to try to wean myself off of it (it's not that I don't love you baby...no don't look at me like that...). We'll see.