Ranting and Raving

I spent a good part of my day yesterday reading running stuff - blogs, magazines, books. Reading about running is great motivation for me and so by 6pm I was ready for a run. It hadn't warmed up very much yesterday and I wanted to get the run in before the sun went down so I started off way faster than I should have. Plus, I ate lunch too late so the start was pretty uncomfortable. But once I got in to the groove it went okay.

I was pretty psyched up after the run and started reading Running Times after the shower. There were a ton of stories about women training for the Olympics and how they run 2x a day, and about 13 times a week. I felt like such a whimp with my 3-4 times a week running! So I went to bed dreaming of intense training sessions and when I woke up this morning I set out to go for an early run.

Uh, Andria, just to let you know, you're not in training for the Olympics, not even Boston (yet), so that may not have been such a good idea. The run this morning was definitely hard, but I figured I'd take it slow. Thanks to some dogs on the road, that didn't happen. I was going to go out and back, but when I went to turn around and head back I saw I was being followed by two dogs. They were still a bit behind me, so I turned around and kept going the other direction and sped it up quite a bit. The run ended up being longer and faster than I wanted it to, and I guess that's not such a bad thing. Okay, maybe I won't be mad at the dogs since they got me to do a better run than I was expecting. But still, leashes people!!!

Rant over.

A few weeks ago when I went to visit my brother and sis-in law in Oklahoma, H and I went on a quest to find a good running bra. Nancy had mentioned one time that she had an Enell bra and that she loved it, so I figured we'd go find those. I won't go into detail about the shopping trip (but if you want to read an account of it, check out H's summary.) What I will go in to detail about is how much I love this piece of running equipment!

I'm fairly... ample... in that area and it's hard to find something that is comfortable and can keep the girls in line. These bras are expensive, but they are worth every penny. I'll admit it took me about 5 runs to get used to it. I've been wearing crappy running bras not really made for someone my size to run in, it impacted the way I ran. I would adjust my arm swing in order to minimize bounce. When I started wearing the Enell it almost felt wierd that the girls just didn't move at all. It took some gettting used to, but now I feel like I run a bit more naturally and more effeciently. The back has this criss-cross that really makes your back feel supported and helps me to have better posture, so I feel like I'm breathing better too. It's pretty neat.

Plus, they hook up the front so it's not such a struggle to get into as the more conventional type sports bras. These are definitely not the most attractive pieces, but they work great! For us girls, this equipment is just as important as the shoes, so I definitely will be getting me more of these in the future.

Okay, rave over.