Running and Getting Somewhere

Tonight Jason and I tried our plan to use our commute as time to get some training runs in. So we had this problem of loving to read on the train, but not wanting to exactly carry our books home with us. We went to REI to see what kind of interesting things we could find. I had posted this question on one of the Runners Worlds Forums and there was a suggestion to try one of these water backpacks and to take the bladder out. Jason found one of these that is very small so he got that(on the left) and I found a small, you might call it a "fanny pack", but I won't because that would be too nerdy. We also thought that the water pack would be good for some longer runs we want to do during the winter months because the water fountains are turned off along the lake front, I don't know if I want to do a 10 -15 mile run and not have any water.

So we started downtown at Madison and Canal and ran east to Clark St. This was so beautiful and fun to run across the rivers. Then just took this all the way home (bascially). This ended up being a 6 mile run. You can see the full route here. This was such a fun run because we got somewhere. We have to get from point A to B somehow and to be able to use a run to do part of that really made the trip much better. It was also fun to run downtown and through some neighborhoods that we don't get to see because we tend to run from our door in some kind of loop and then back to our door.

As far as the packs go, I guess Jason's worked really well, while mine didn't. I couldn't quite get the thing to sit right on my waist. I put the pack part right above my fanny thinking that perhaps it would just sit on my lower back and not bother me too much. Unfortunatly it kept sliding around and I had to cinch the strap tight so that it wouldn't bounce. This became a problem at the end as we were moving a pretty good clip and it was affecting my breathing/stomach (too tight!!!). Jason said his little bag didn't bother him AT ALL so he will carry my book from now on and perhaps we can take turns with that.

We will try this again tomorrow and then slightly shorter runs on Thursday (4.25 mi) and Friday (3.8 mi). Whee!!!