4 miles plus a little more

Feeling much better after an day of Christmas shopping with my husband and the fat little rabbit.  We went way overboard, as we do every Christmas.  The plan every year is for Santa to bring 3 gifts, plus stocking stuffers, and then a few gifts from Mom and Dad.  We stuck to the 3 from Santa pretty well, but the Mom and Dad gifts, well, that's another story.  They just make too many cute toys these days, and then add in some books and dvds, and suddenly we've got too much again.

My present this year is new running shoes.  My old shoes are more than a year old, and even though I didn't run much while pregnant, my husband and I took a mile long walk every day during lunch, and I wore them to do errands and stuff, so they are pretty shot.  The last time I went shopping for running shoes I was very frustrated by the lack of in-stock women's shoes in wide widths.  I have bony, wide feet.  New Balance was the only store that had what I wanted in stock.  I like New Balance, so that's what I went with.  Today, the closest New Balance store was out of our way, but there was a RunOn! store on the way home, so we stopped there.  The helpful salesperson measured my feet, and suggested that I just try men's shoes.  I did, and yay!  they fit!  Now I just have to act surprised when I open them Christmas morning.

I also learned that the store hosts a social run on Wednesday nights.  I inquired about the pace that they run, and was told they take all levels.  I am really slow though.  I'll go this week and see how it goes.

When we got home from shopping, I went for my run that I put off this morning.  I decided since I downloaded a running app that tells me my distance every 5 minutes, I'd just run through the neighborhood without a plan.  That may not have been the best of ideas.  I ran up to one of the major roads through the city, but when I got to halfway on my planned distance, there wasn't a good road to cut back through towards my house.  I didn't want to just turn around, because I find that too boring for words, so I kept on.  In the end it added only around a half mile more than I was planning.  i think I'll stick to at least roughly mapping out a route before I run next time.