Dresses and Shoes

      4 Comments on Dresses and Shoes

I went to bed at 9:30 last night, but despite that, it was still a bit more challenging than usual to get out of bed at 5:40am.  I did it, though, and when I staggered downstairs, I took a look at the thermometer.

Wow! Twenty degrees colder than my last run!   The sunrise was beautiful, though this picture that I took at 5:58am doesn’t do it justice.

My house is not in a good place to view the sunrise, sadly.

Thursdays are my 2-mile days, so despite the fact that I was feeling tired, I decided it was time to work on speed.  I set out at a super-fast pace…at about a quarter mile in, I looked down and saw I was doing about an 8:43 pace—yikes!  Way too fast, so I slowed it down some.  My goal was still to finish with a new PR pace, so I continued to push all the way down the road.

At one point, toward the end of the first mile, I saw a walker coming in the opposite direction.  That’s the first time since I started running that I’ve seen  another person out on the road with me!  I will shamelessly admit here that I did feel a little proud of myself for being a “runner” as opposed to a “walker” at that moment. 😉  Considering I started out as a walker, I should probably be less smug, but I couldn’t help it—it felt really good to be the one running instead of walking. 🙂

When I hit my turn-around point, I sped up really fast, hoping it would keep my overall timing from being skewed.  Then I passed that same walker that I’d seen earlier.  I really wanted to engage her and find out where she lived (I have no idea who she is, but she must be one of my neighbors!), but I was way too out of breath to say anything.  Instead, I just kept plodding on, one foot in front of the other, mentally ticking off the distance in quarter mile increments, ie, “Okay, Steph, passing the brown farmhouse means you have ¾ of a mile left. Now you’ve passed the big brick house, you have half a mile.  Okay, now you’ve passed the house with all the statues, just a quarter mile to go!”  It’s funny how well I know my road after 7 months of walking/running it.  🙂

I was really shooting for that PR pace, and, based on my lap times, I was sure to hit it if I just kept at my current pace, so I did.  I had planned to do a better picture of the sunrise after my run, but by the time I got home, I was so damn exhausted, I just walked into the house, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge (didn’t even have the energy to put ice in a glass, lol!) and collapsed on the couch.  Damn, I was beat!!  But I did make my PR pace!

Woo hoo!  Here are my splits:

And my timing:

Ha! So much for trying to overcome the “turn-around” timing…look at that crazy zip and rise!  Ah, well, whatever.  I think I’m over it.

My previous 2-mile pace had been 9:44, so I was darn proud of this morning’s run.  I think I paid for it, though, because I was tired pretty much all day at work.  And, to add to that, I found that my knees really started to hurt in the late morning and continued to hurt all day. 🙁  I have never had that kind of soreness before in my knees, so I began to wonder what might be up.  Then I realized I was wearing different shoes today than what I normally wear at work.  My usual shoe every day are these black ones:

But today, because I was wearing brown, I wore these brown ones:

They both look a bit insane for a flat-footed girl like me, but I’ve found that I’ve actually gotten quite used to the black ones, and as long as I’m not on my feet for a long period of time (usually I’m not), they are fine.  The brown ones are actually the same height as the black ones, but I’m wondering if the thicker heel added different stress to my knees?  Anyway, I can only guess that the different shoes, coupled with the 2-mile run this morning, was not a good combination.  Too bad…I like the brown shoes!  We will see what becomes of them.

Before I took pictures of the shoes themselves, I actually went looking for pictures of me wearing them.  I found some, but you couldn’t see the shoes well in one picture, and you couldn’t see them at all in the other one.  However, looking at me in the pictures really surprised me…

Wow! I had no idea I weighed that much at my sister’s wedding (first pic), but I see by my Weight Watchers eTools that I was almost 40 pounds heavier than I am now!  The second picture was taken exactly 1 year ago, at a bar mitzvah, when I was about 30 pounds heavier than I am now.  I actually felt like I was pretty thin at the bar mitzvah. 😛

There is a downside to having lost the weight though…I have a wedding to go to next month, and I have absolutely no dress to wear—nothing fits!  I have been dress shopping for weeks, but my distaste of shopping is really coming through.  I hate everything I try on, and I hate the whole process of trying stuff on.  UGH!!  I want the perfect dress to just show up on my doorstep, ready to go.  I actually tried that route, ordering a dress online from Dress Barn.

Looks good on the mannequin, but on me it felt very heavy, and just not well-fitted at all.  I just didn’t feel at all “pretty” in it, so back to the store it went (and $6 on shipping wasted).  I tried on 4 more dresses today at the store, but they were all ugly and/or didn’t fit well.  Sigh.  I hope I find a dress before July 28th.  Argh!

Of course, then I’ll be back to the question—which shoes do I wear?! 😉

Thanks for reading!!

4 thoughts on “Dresses and Shoes

  1. Jenn

    I so wish I were closer, because I would totally take you shopping to dress you up. And you could do the same for me. I find it to be much more fun to go shopping to dress someone else as opposed to myself. Congrats on your new PR, I hope your knees are feeling better.

    Reply
    1. steph Post author

      I wish you lived closer, too!! We could have so much fun together, shopping and having our Weight-Watcher friendly lunches. 😉 xoxo

      Reply
  2. Robbie-Lynn

    Wow that is a great PR. It took me months to get that fast. Congrats. I couldn’t even recognize you in the pic from your sisters wedding. What a change!

    Sometimes increasing pace causes knees to hurt because as we get faster we tend to stretch out our stride, hit the groud way in front of your body. This causes added stress on the knees and joints. What helps is to think of keeping your feet under your body and increasing your cadence, how fast you turn your legs over.

    Hope this helps some

    Reply
    1. steph Post author

      Thank you so much, Robbie-Lynn! That does help, and I will definitely try to concentrate on that more when I am doing my next “fast” pace. Thanks also for the nice words about my pace and my pictures!

      Reply

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