But first...

I want to tell you about my exercising...really, I do. But first...

Today is this girl's birthday...

...and she's not too sure how she feels about it. Might be lack of cake, presents, and party...or it might just be because she's THREE...which is probably the hardest age EVER. She is my magic baby and I really can't believe she is here on this earth let alone three whole years old. Despite her cranky face today, she really has been a massive ray of sunshine in my life ever since she was born. Being born in the caul is said to have mystical properties, so it is fitting that she is a caul baby.

We celebrated by going to the Little Farm. This is not a small farming operation where we grow things to eat. It is a collection of farm animals that city kids can see up close and personal. But more on that in a different post...there've been so many mommy blogger posts lately, today I'll give you a respite :) Well, except for this...

Big tongue about to envelope that celery stalk and rip it from my hand...

totally tripped out my little birthday girl.

Now on to fitness...or some facsimile thereof...

I ran my hilly 3.5 on Sunday, which was the first time I had run in about a week. I vowed to start running some more challenging routes to prepare myself for my participation in the Oakland Marathon Relay coming soon...March 25th. As I was too busy sitting on my a** all of yesterday while my kids were in school, I was forced to run in my development last night after they were all in bed. My development does not provide a challenging route...I'm lame. I suck. I should just hang it up. Self-flagellation is good for you, right? Wrong! Instead of beating myself up, I gave myself credit for what I had done.

3.6 miles ...so a little farther than Sunday. Practically skipping along at a slightly-under-10-minute-mile pace. It was my longest run to date in these...

I'm liking the Newton Gravity. I alternate these with my Mizuno Wave Rider 15's. Both shoes are radically different from what I've always used and from each other, but I'm feeling very comfortable with this rotation. I've decided that I want to be accustomed to running in a few different shoes so that when one gets discontinued I don't go into an all-out panic and spend days scouring the internet for clearance back-stock of discontinued shoes in my size. Who else has done that? Show of hands, please. You know you have.

I am looking forward to providing a review of both pair of shoes. But first...

I need to run enough in them to formulate a valid viewpoint :)  And to that end, I hope to run a couple more times this week. I'm not calling it a 'plan' because "life is what happens when you're busy making plans" and so that's a sure-fire way for me to jinx that idea. For now, I'll just call it 'hope'...and I'll keep hanging on to it :)