For the Love of Links!

"Sit as little as possible. Give no credence to any thought that was not born outdoors while moving about freely." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Today was an off day. No run for me, but I did spend some quality time with the lovely Ms. Ten Minutes. The DVD doesn't have a menu, so instead of trying to fast forward and rewind to particular workouts, I just went straight through and did them all: Thighs, Arms, Buns, Abs, and Stretching. At ten minutes each, the whole thing took just under an hour, but I hardly noticed the time passing. I got smart this time and played music in the background to drown out the high-pitched squeak of the trainers nagg - erh.. I mean encouragement. So it was much more bearable. Although short, the workouts weren't easy; I have a feeling I will wake up sore tomorrow, but I think the extra muscle building will help me on my runs, so its probably worth it. Even more exciting, I've discovered that I've been using Pandora radio for so long now that it now plays a never-ending stream of songs I absolutely love. Singing along to Tracy Chapman's Fast Car made my glutes workout particularly enjoyable.

In other exciting news, I found two new running websites today, and I have no idea how I have been living without them for so long (cough... 12 days). Dailymile.com describes itself as a "social training log" and is pretty much Facebook for runners, as far as I can tell. The amazing thing is that it has an easy-to-use route tracker that allows you to calculate the exact distance, calories and pace of any run in seconds. This is infinitely better than struggling with Googlemaps to track my route, which doesn't allow you to go the "wrong" way on one-way streets or utilize roads without vehicle access (both of which I do regularly). Even better, Dailymile keeps a running tab (ha ha, get it?) of all of my runs, including obvious things like total distance and time and way more interesting things like gallons of gas saved, numbers of TVs powered and, my personal favorite, the exact number of donuts burned (In my past two runs I have burned 3.51 donuts!). It also seems like a great way to connect with other local runners, although I haven't taken advantage of that particular feature yet.

The other handy link I ran across was Mapmyrun.com which, true to its name, also allows you to track your route, although I don't find its system to be as user-friendly as Dailymile, and I noticed a lot more obnoxious pop-up ads. For me, the most exciting thing about this site is the "Search for Runs" feature. I typed in my city and the maximum/minimum mileage I was looking for and got a list of more than 30 runs very close to my apartment, even a few that were an exact 5k distance - which will be very useful when I get to that point. Some are definitely more exciting than others, but all of them include the total distance, a brief description of the terrain, and a detailed map. The site has some other features, but I wasn't as impressed with any of them in the ten minutes I spent skimming the rest of the site. Might still be worth checking out though.

For me, the process of learning about running is just as important as the act of running itself. I love finding new links, tips, and small pieces of motivation. It keeps me from getting bored and gives me even more reasons to keep going. So if you have any links or tips that you use to keep track of your health, fitness, or sanity, please feel free to share, and I will continue to share mine!