Gear and Running

Yesterday was a really productive day for me. Even with my bum knee (from the Rattlesnake hike the week before), I completed my first half marathon. I always said I wasn't interested in running half marathons because I didn't think I could run for that long. I decided around New Years that this year I would challenge myself to do things I either never considered doing or never thought I could do. I'm feeling pretty great today knowing that I accomplished my first goal of this year. Rachel and I ran somewhere around a 10 minute mile for the 13 miles of the Mercer Island half marathon (we're still waiting on our official time). It was a beautiful run and I'm definitely interested in trying a half marathon again!

The endurance aspect of doing the longer runs will likely come in very handy for my overall conditioning for Mt. Rainier. After the race, Rachel and I were already moving on to plans for our upcoming races - the St. Paddy's Day Dash in Seattle next weekend and Bloomsday over in Spokane in May.

After the run, we decided to head to REI to look into boots for climbing Rainier. REI has their 20% off one item promotion with your membership going on for the month of March so I thought it was a good opportunity to purchase one of my more expensive items for the trip. There aren't many choices (at least for women) in mountaineering boots, but I found some that I think I'll be happy with. The La Sportivas I picked up came highly recommended. I wanted to get them soon so that I could decide if they were the right boots for me and so I could start breaking them in long before the actual climb.



After getting the boots we headed on to OR (Outdoor Research) to check out their current sale. I'm glad we decided to go there as I was able to find some good mountaineering gloves at a really nice discount and pair of base layer pants. I'll be doing some more research and/or shopping this week. I'd like to find a backpack and some other clothing layers fairly soon.

I felt like it was a pretty successful day all around. :)