Needed rest

Wow. I knew the weekend took a lot out of me, but I guess I was running on a real deficit to begin. I would have thought that laying around all of yesterday would have been enough to get the spring back in my step, but it wasn't. Using the long weekend, I took another day of huge rest, barely leaving the couch and my own personal The Wire marathon (wicked show, BTW), and just motivated myself to hit the treadmill for an easy four miler. Not surprisingly, I felt a lot better once I got the blood flowing and some movement. I'm still in desperate need of this rest week, but I feel confident I'll be right by Friday.

I'm also breaking in two new pairs of shoes this week. Tonight I debuted the Nike Air Zoom Katana Star. It's day-glo orange, so you can see me coming. It's designed as a racing flat, so there's a minimum of cushion. Since I've been fixing my stride, this is a good thing. I can feel when I land wrong, but can keep rolling when I'm landing correctly. I was considering using this as a triathlon shoe, but there are a couple of odd seams that will keep me from wearing it barefoot. I could feel hotspots forming within the first two minutes, so I needed to put on socks, and the time it would take to do that in a race isn't worth the time savings this shoe would provide. Instead, if I were to do a marathon in the near future, this would be the shoe. It's incredibly light, and just comfortable enough. I think I'll really enjoy training in this bad boy for a while.

Run: 4 miles @ 7.5 mph + 4 strides