Karen’s Training Log

A beautiful day for a walk

The weather today was nothing short of spectacular for a walk.  Sunny, low humidity, mid 70’s.  We had about a dozen ladies turn out for today’s training walk. With only 49 days until the NY Avon Walk, training is shifting into high gear.  We did our usual 7 mile walk and then 6 of us continued for a total of 10 miles.  Next time we’ll move up to 15 miles.  That will get us ready for more than half of the first day and all of the second day.

I’m still having “sneaker issues”.  I bought a pair of Asics running shoes for last year’s walk.  They were fine during training, but I ended up with huge blisters by the end of Day 1.  I wore them a couple of times this year during training walks and was ending up with blisters along the inside heel area on both feet.  I decided the blisters were being caused by insoles that were not sitting correctly in the shoes, causing chafing.  I bought a new pair of cushioned insoles.  After the 10 mile walk today, the left foot is fine, but the right foot has minor irritation, which I have a sneaking suspicion would blossom into a full fledged blister by the 20 mile maker.

Yes, I am just being cheap and I should just go and get a new pair of sneakers. But I spent $90 on these shoes and I haven’t put very many miles on them.  At the very least, I could wear these on the second day of the walk this year. I’ll just have to remember to put a Band-aid and moleskin on before the I head out.  The smart thing would be to break down, get a new pair of shoes and keep these for shorter walks.

On a completely different note, as I am sitting here typing, the kitten is having a great time knocking everything off the table.  Life is a cat toy, apparently.

August is “busting” out all over

The latest project the knitting group from work is making are “Tit-Bits”.  The finished products will be donated to an organization for distribution to women who have had mastectomies.   The pattern comes from knitty.com.   We were asked to make C-cup sized prosthesis and as I was knitting the first one, I thought it looked rather large.  Turns out, I was making the DD size.  I’m still not very proficient in reading knitting patterns.  They are not very difficult to knit.  I did make one change to the directions.  Instead of knitting from the inside out, I knit them from outside row to the nipple.   Decreasing stitches is much easier than increasing, at least for me.

Saturday morning training walk

This mornings training walk was very well attended - 18 ladies showed up.  It was the second annual Tri-State Training Day for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer !! Training Walks were held throughout the tri-state area in an effort to get all of our walkers out on their feet all at the same time!

While we were waiting for a few more walkers, a bumble bee came towards me.  OK, it wasn’t really a bumble bee, it was my sister, Amy, dressed in her yellow and black biking gear.  She was going on a bike and run.  She completed the NY Triathalon 2 weeks ago.  She is my inspiration.

The sky was cloudy and it was really humid when we started walking.  About 3 miles out, it started to drizzle. One of the great things about Loantaka park is the path is covered by very thick tree canopies.  It has to rain pretty steady before it makes it past the leaves.  As we returned to the parking lot just over 2 hours later, the sky to the west was really dark and threatening.   About 20 minutes later, the heavens opened up and it poured.   We certainly lucked out and got our walk finished just in time.