Pace average apron. 9.38 from total time including all stops and breaks. Ran 5 mile franklin loop. repeated hill 2 times. stopped at home for water, bathroom, check the laundry and email for a couple minutes. ran 8 mile kirkway loop. lots of hills! finished up with 1 more mile in the neighborhood. (I think one reason running a race is easier and pace is faster for me than training is because I don't have to multitask. I can just relax and run and not worry about laundry). My iPhone is becoming my new running partner. I use the Nike App. It's nice having Lance Armstrong and others cheering me on periodically. It's only limitation is that it's distance is not very accurate when I talk on the phone. It stops the distance while the clock keeps ticking. I'm ok with that though because I already know the distance of most of my runs. I also use my phone to make phone calls while running, listen to books on tape. I haven't loaded it with music yet. (probably b/c I lost 11 Gigs of music with my computer upgrade- arghh). Two nights ago I was multi tasking with the iPhone while Cheryl coached me on making her homemade MacN Cheese. I screamed as I watched my phone slip into the boiling cheese sauce. I spent the rest of the night carefully cleaning out the headphone hole with a safety pin and running a hair dryer over the device. The sound only worked in speaker mode and if I tilted it a certain way and spoke loudly into the mic. I thought I was going to have to go to the Apple store again! The next morning, MIRACLE of MIRACLES, the phone and all apps worked! Someone is watching out for me. :) I write all this because I was really grateful for my iPhone running partner today. I was also so grateful that I could be outside! This winter has been mild and so different from the past three. I can actually crawl out of the dungeon on a winter day and run in fresh air. I love that I live in a beautiful place! The lakes, dirt roads, interesting homes, trees, rolling hills, birds, fill me with joy! | 