Eight Is Great

Since we went up to LA yesterday to visit Dad & Shelly and to visit my mom's resting place, we didn't get to run with WCRR again this week. So this morning after some breakfast, we went out to Solana Beach to run our 8 miles. I mapped out the route at Gmap-Pedometer again, and checked the weather. Cloudy all day. Perfect for running! From Fletcher Cove at Solana Beach, we headed south on the 101, taking a side route at Coast Blvd in Del Mar, then up 15th back to the 101 to Torrey Pines. Seagrove Park in Del Mar, next to Jake's Del Mar Restaurant. I ran by so many nice restaurants by the ocean! And the smell of breakfast coming from each of them made my mouth water... Oh, since it was a cloudy day, all my photos turned out kinda blah and gray. Adobe Lightroom to the rescue! I used this preset that came with LR called "Direct Positive", and it made my gray skies and ocean turn blue, LOL! The run was hilly again this week. I can't seem to pick a flat route! So I was heading up hill and coming around this bend, where I knew I would be heading downhill soon. This was close to the 4 mile turnaround in Torrey Pines. When lo and behold look who I ran into! Todd was faster than me so he had turned around and was heading back. So I asked him to take a photo of me too. Not too proud of the sweaty look, but hey, it's been almost 4 miles! So I ran down the hill to Torrey Pines State Beach. This view is one of my favorites in San Diego. You come around the bend and go downhill and you suddenly see the ocean. I love it! After the turnaround, coming back uphill wasn't quite as fun. Wish this was my house. What a view, and what a cool looking house with solar power. I felt pretty good during the whole run and I ran a perfect split - the same time for the first four miles as the last four miles. I brought a packet of Vanilla Bean GU and sucked it down at the 4 mile turnaround. The GU gave me good energy for the rest of the run. This was Todd's first time eating a GU and he told me afterward that he loved it, LOL. Him and his sweet tooth. Here are my stats from the run, courtesy of the Garmin Forerunner. I also had the Garmin software interface with Google Earth, and saw my route from satellite imagery. Pretty darn cool! So the reason we started and ended the run in Solana Beach was so we could go to our favorite pizza place, Bongiornos, afterwards. Sad but true, we plan runs around eating. Todd digging in: After some showering and cleaning up, we rested and played on the computer in the afternoon. Then we went out to dinner at Tofu House, an excellent Tofu-oriented (hence the name) Korean restaurant in Kearny Mesa. We decided that tofu soups were a perfect anecdote to the cold and wettish weather we're having. At Korean restaurants, you get little side dishes of marinated veggies (background). In the foreground is my Seafood Special Tofu soup. Todd got a BBQ beef tofu soup, which he liked, but said the BBQ beef's flavor got redundant after a while. After dinner we went to Road Runner Sports nearby. Yes, there was an actual reason for the trip besides eating. Although that is reason enough in and of itself. :) They have a "Shoe Dog" service at RRS, where an expert looks at your feet and have you run barefoot on the treadmill while they videotape your stride to see what your feet do when you run. To check whether you need more supportive shoes because your feet pronate too much. Then you walk across this pad on the floor, one foot at a time. The pad measures heat as your foot strikes it, and they can tell by the heat map of your feet how your feet hit the ground and where the pressure points are. To make a long story short, I was told that I'm wearing the right running shoes (Saucony Progrid Ride, which is a neutral running shoe), as long as I wear my green Superfeet inserts (which I do). My ankles roll in slightly when I run (I totally saw evidence of this on the video they took!), but the green Superfeet inserts corrected it and I don't need stability shoes. Todd on the other hand needed stability shoes, and he had been wearing neutral shoes. So the guy brought out four pairs and he ended up getting a pair of Asics, which he said felt good. And we got more GU! Because Todd likes them now. :)