The Rain, Oh, the Bloody Non-Stop Rain

The last few days here in Sydney have been pretty rainy. In fact, it's honest-to-goodness been raining for a full week, no breaks.

Unfortunately, it's not supposed to stop any time soon.

Rain has brought out the worst in me. On a good day, I spend most of my time squirreled away indoors, reading The Internet and watching too much TV. On days where it rains non-stop? All productivity grinds to a halt. Let me tell you, Steven's lucky I'm still showering (and I'm only doing so because it's the warmest place in the house! Humidity + no indoor heating = really cold house).

Yesterday, I fell to a new low.

I began watching Bachelor Pad 2012. That's right, I'm watching reality show RERUNS, and I'm hooked.

This morning, however, there was a break in the clouds.

Suddenly I got my mojo back! I was more active in these few hours of sunshine than in the past 5 days!

I took a homemade wrap down to Steven during his lunch hour.

We had some Starbucks until he had to go back to the office. Then, I went home, and decided I wasn't going to wait on my run this week. I had sunshine NOW, so I had better haul ass.

It was the muddiest run in my life.

That water was literally FLOWING down the steps, creating muddy puddles everywhere.

However, I don't think I've ever had so much fun on a run before. I was dodging puddles left and right, leaping, jumping, cross stepping like a pro. I loved the patches of sunshine and new green grass on lawns. I even loved the huge hills and massive downhills. I'm definitely going to miss these neighbourhood runs, especially those bush-walky / trail bits that are just so beautiful.

I'm lucky my Vibrams are lightweight, water-happy shoes because I got them soaked.

Post run, I did some stretching, drank about 3 glasses of juice, and showered. Does anyone know how to gracefully get out of sweaty, sticky work-out clothes without pulling a muscle? I need some sort of shoe horn for workout clothes.

My stats:
4.45 miles in 55:07
Average pace 12:22 min / mile

After 2 weeks without running hills, I got schooled

Since I've joined the gym, I've been enjoying the lower impact treadmill runs immensely. As such, I haven't pounded the neighbourhood pavement in a while. My legs have completely forgotten about the hills.. Oh, the hills...

Today, I took both Garmin and Run Keeper out for a bit of a comparison.

Garmin said this:

Run Keeper said this:

Garmin said:
3.50 miles in 40:12 minutes with an average pace of 11.29 minutes/mile

Run Keeper said:
3.42 miles in 38:55 minutes with an average pace of 11:23 minutes/mile

As you can see, there is really hardly any difference between the two, just the time it took for me to take my cell phone out of my pocket and stop Run Keeper while gasping like a asthmatic 90-year-old. So I'm pretty happy with using Run Keeper whenever Garmin's satellites cannot be found.

Run Keeper isn't good enough to make me put away my Garmin for good, however. Not only is Garmin lighter than my cell phone, but it's also less bulky. I track my runs on Garmin Connect, so switching to Run Keeper would be way too much work.

After my run, I put on my new Nike Training Club app and attempted the Kickin' It 30 minute workout with the morning news in the background.

 I think I made it to 20 minutes, and then I couldn't take any more burn in my thighs.

 Now I'm just chillin' in front of our beloved space heater.

Sydney doesn't get cold enough for central heating, so we have this little space heater. You can stand in front of it and watch your skin blister, or step out of it's heat ray and freeze. As a compromise, I have it mostly facing away from me, and I'll walk in front of it every once in a while.

What are your plans for the day?