A New Toy

Maybe I haven't been running these 5K right, because after this last one, the legs were really creaky for two straight days. Usually, I don't even feel like I raced the day after a 5K. I think it's easy for the body and mind to kind of go into marathon mode during these races and not let you go too far over the redline in order to save something for later in the race. The problem is that in a 5K, there really is no later. You need to go hard from the gun to the end. I don't think I do a good job of that.

Monday the legs were still very creaky so I did a very easy 8 miler. I think part of the problem was that the race was at 6PM, and the legs didn't really get a good chance to shake out after the race. Normally after a hard effort like that, I have the rest of the day to walk around and get everything back to normal. That didn't happen Saturday night. I slept poorly that night as well because the legs were so stiff.

When I got home from work yesterday I had a "present" (as the kids were calling it) waiting for me. I had a Visa Giftcard burning a hole in my pocket that I got for my birthday a few weeks back and decided that I would see if I could a cheap mp3 player to use occasionally while running. I certainly didn't want to invest a lot of money in this thing as I have tried to run with headphones in the past and have never had much success. They seem to throw off my running rhythm and just generally annoy me. However, technology has come a long way since the days of the walkman, so I figured it might just be worth giving it another try. So off I went to search for a cheap mp3. When I stumbled on the 1Gb sunglasses/mp3 player, I was sold. Even if they were horrible, it was worth the price just to see exactly what 25 bucks plus free shipping would get me. Well, to say this thing came on a slow boat from China really isn't much of an exaggeration. It took almost 3 weeks to get here from Hong Kong.

I must say, I was initial impression when I opened the package was a good one. I guess I was expecting the worst, but the glasses seemed sturdy and pretty light as well. The only thing that seemed odd, was that I couldn't see out of the lenses. I'd put them on, and everything was distorted and fuzzy and dark. I thought to myself (OK, it wasn't to myself, I complained to my wife), the easiest thing to make on this thing had to be the sunglasses. How could they possibly screw that up? Finally I figured out that they had some protective sheets on the lenses to guard them against scratches. Once I peeled those off, all was well with the world. As an added bonus, the mp3 player came preloaded with 2 Britney Spears songs! Whatta deal!

The plan was to try them out today on my 16 miler, so I spent the night loading it up with songs (once I figured out how to "rip" them off of my CDs…I'm telling ya, I'm old school) and charging the battery (and deleting the Britney Spears songs of course). I was still expecting them to be horrible once I tried running with them on, but I must say that the thing performed admirably. They were lightweight, yet didn't move around at all while I was running, which I was kind of afraid of. The sunglasses didn't even fog up much, and it was pretty steamy out when I went for my run. The ear pieces don't actually go all the way in your ears..they just kind of sit next to your ear. I liked that, but that also makes it a little hard to hear if there's a lot of background noise. For the most part, that wasn't really an issue. There's no volume on the things that I can find (although I didn't read the manual, so there might be a way to do it), and there are only 3 buttons: stop/play, forward track, backward track.

Ah yes…the run. It went great. I pretty much just cruised the whole thing. I was surprised to see my pace at 6:29 at the turnaround point and finished with a 6:26 for the 16 miles. I must admit, it was kind of nice during those last few miles to be able to say only 6 more songs and I'm done, instead of counting down the miles (or the steps as it sometimes goes). I don't know if I'm quite a mp3 player convert, but for today, I liked it.