Another Transition Afoot?

I think I'm making another transition, this time from casual jogger to casual runner, if one who runs can go about it casually. Most runners I know are pretty dedicated folk. Sure, not all of them are continually training for some marathon, but they take their running seriously. And I'm starting to do the same.

How do I know this? I've signed up for my second road race--a 10K this time. "Isn't that a bit much considering you've only done one race, and it was just a 5K?" asketh the Gentle reader. "Eh, guess I'll find out!" sayeth this inane blogger.

I probably wouldn't have signed up for a second race so quickly if it were for the...unique opportunity the Nike Human Race 10K presents. Austin's only one of four cities in the U.S. hosting one of these runs. I'm not a big "Woohoo! Hometown!" type of person, but I think it's pretty cool Austin was selected. Pardon my Anglo-Saxon vernacular for a moment, but Austin ain't shit compared to L.A., Chicago, NYC, London, Paris, Seoul (woohoo!), Buenos Aires and all these other monumentally global cities that are also hosting 10Ks as part of the race. Plus I get a nifty shirt--and no one can resist the allure of a nifty souvenir shirt.

As for the run, don't think for a moment, Gentle Reader, that I'll be aiming to finish in the top 50 as I did my first time out. No, my only aim is to make it to the finish line without having to stop and walk--the same aim I had for my first race, which I actually didn't meet. This time meeting that aim will be a bit tougher: Sure, I routinely run a little over seven miles at a 3.0 incline on the treadmill at the gym in just a little over an hour, but that's in the filtered and cooled air of a gym, not in the hot, mucky outdoors. (The race starts at 6:30 PM, and there's no way in Hell downtown Austin will be a cool place to run on August 31. No friggin' way.)

That said, I do plan to do some actual training to help me prepare for the running conditions. Even though it's still hot and dry outside with no sign of the heat and drought relenting (Hurricane Dolly might be heading ashore south of us, but we'll get bubkes out of it), I'm hoping to spend a bit more time running outside. Not only will this hopefully help my lungs and sinuses prep for the race, but it'll also help (for a time) diminish some of the mental anguish surrounding my runs currently. Nothing sucks more than to have to run while a crappy movie is playing on the cardio cinema monitor screen. This morning, for example, Cloverfield was playing. Gads, what a terrible waste of various resources (although brain power is not one of them)! Plus the jittery, quaking, unceasing movement of the Steady Cam it was shot with made me physically ill (or perhaps it was just my draining sinuses that gave me some serious tummy trouble).

Crap, I'm rambling again. Sorry! I beg your forgiveness, Gentle Reader.

Anywho, because I'm insanely paranoid about not working hard enough or long enough, I'm thinking about picking up Nike's latest training gizmo, the Nike+ sportsband. Like the Nike+ iPod sports kit and the Nike+ Amp...thing that preceded it, this little toy tracks (with pretty credible accuracy) your pace, calories burned, distance and time spent running. Except you don't need an iPod nano to use the sportsband because it has a detachable USB key that stores all these good stuff for you to upload to the Nike+ training site to track and review, while the wristband displays that good stuff while you're running. Yeah, sure, I have an iPod nano, but I don't want anyone or anything interrupting my tune-age when I'm running. (That's why I secretly make offerings of lint and decapitated tag fasteners to the FSM so that the boy won't have any issues in the gym daycare while I'm running--because his doing so would supremely piss me off.) And while the Amp's iPod remote control features have me salivating, I don't like the LED display. How chintzy!

So there it is, Gentle Reader, the proof that I'm getting serious about running: I'm thinking of plunking down $59 or so of my good money (very little of which I'm earning these days since I'm still unemployed) so that I can run outside the gym and still satisfy my obsessive need to burn X number of calories and run X number of miles. I'm a crazy one, aren't I?