Holy Hotspot Hell

If I listened to music when I ran this would have been today's theme song for the last 5 miles

Today's run certainly did not go to plan. I was initially thinking that I would try and get in a 20 miler by running from mine to meet up with a couple of other friends for a 13-15 miler and then back but last night's designated driver's duties went a little later than I thought. Pair that with a very dodgy platter of nachos for after run re-fueling and things are going to go wrong! Upset stomach and over-sleeping meant that I ended up driving to the meeting place so 6 miles out the window there. Then at 8.5 miles I started getting a major hot spot on the bottom of my left foot--the insoles in the trainers I was wearing had started slipping about so I'd removed them 2 weeks ago but hadn't ran further than 7 miles in them since. Apparently anything over that is a no-go! Running hurt but walking hurt even more. Hey-ho, live and learn, that's what training runs are for is to find problems like this.

Of Runsound Mind

If you're on facebook please give Of Runsound Mind a like please, there's also a twitter account but as of right now it's just cross-posting the facebook stuff.  Thanks and I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend celebrating Easter in your preferred way and that you have a much better long run than I did today! 

Things I should have learned by now

1. Don't attend a concert wearing 4 inch heel boots where you are going to be on your feet for almost four hours. Yes, you would have thought I'd have learned that after the Lacuna Coil gig. At least I didn't have a 10k to run this morning like I did after that night.

2. Stay away from the cheap cider. Even watered down it's not going to do nice things to your body.

3. If you're short not even wearing 4 inch heels is going to help you see if you stand at the back.

4. The Kontours are interesting, I'm going to keep an ear out for them from now. Their set was far too short though.

5. Birmingham city centre is worth visiting again.

6. Monday night gigs mean you can usually score a parking space close by that's FREE!!!

7. The Subways put on a fantastic show--they have edged out Kasabian as the best gig I've seen here in the UK. I should have definitely known this from all the youtube vids I've watched of their concerts but to see it live was amazing!

8. Charlotte is not only a kick ass musician, she's also a triathlete!!!!!!!!! No wonder she can headbang and bounce around the stage with that much energy! Yes, there's a girlcrush moment happening. 

Huge thanks to Tunes, Trends, & Threads and SJM Concerts for the tickets via the twitter contest! 

Advent Running

25/25 Done and Dusted! 

This year I participated in Advent Running, the guidelines were simple, try and run a minimum of 30 minutes every day the 1st through 25th of December and post about it on the facebook group or twitter.  Since I was already attempting to run every day (started November 8th) I thought this might be a good way to keep things fresh and stay motivated.  It has been AWESOME. There were some days when I was sorely tempted to blow off the run but then would read about someone who completed theirs that had a far less flexible schedule than mine and that would be enough to get me out the door.  There were so many amazing stories about running firsts, personal bests, struggles, and what inspired some to begin running.  

Thank you Claudia and James and everyone who participated!!! This has been one of my best months of training thanks to #adventrunning.  I have survived but I'm not so sure about my trainers! 

social media and customer service

A curious exchange on twitter has led to this post, we all take to the interwebs to complain about and to corporations but how often do we receive service that is just as it should be and we never say anything about it? Here in the UK I've had multiple dealings with one particular shipping company that has rarely been good, ie not showing up multiple days in a row yet the site shows attempted deliveries when there has been someone here to answer the door.  Yes, I went on twitter and facebook to complain--in a polite but emphatic way but today's experience with a different company had me on the former to say thank you.

They send an email (or text if you choose) the day before saying that they will be delivering a package the next day and you can choose to re-schedule or have it left with a neighbor/neighbour.  Then the day of, you receive another notification of the hour window time of when they will be there. How brilliant is that???? The driver was here within 15 minutes of the time frame beginning.  Exceptional and handy!  So I then went on twitter and said thank you and within 1.5 hours received two tweets back from a disgruntled lady saying that I must be the only happy customer. Yes, from her experience she earned the right to complain and SHOULD do so. How else can a  business know when there is a failing if people don't do as much? But by the same token, if there is excellent service then kudos should be handed out as well. Can you imagine being in customer service and only getting "yelled" at all day?

A quick read-through of the woman's twitter feed who chose to include me in her complaint revealed a lot about her grasp of social media though. Basically she rarely interacts with anyone personally, using the service only to flog her business, and the majority of her posts are in ALL CAPS. Yes she "shouts" a lot, clearly she doesn't have a grasp of how to use what can be a powerful tool.  Her loss.

Ok, my rant is over :-)

rambling

Not many people know it but I have a strong interest in retailing news, I always thought when I was growing up that I would end up doing something in the apparel industry but it's weird where life takes you, ie into a profession almost the complete opposite. Because of that interest I have a couple of different email subscriptions that keep me sort of up to date on what's happening in the retail world and this study about social media by Colloquy caught my eye this morning. I think the statistic that took me most by surprise was the use of landline telephones by those polled.  Will be interesting to see how this changes with the next study. Personally I use twitter and facebook quite a bit to research or to discuss positive and negative experiences with various companies and products as do many people I know so I believe that set of statistics will only climb higher

Another intriguing bit of news was about Reebok opening a FitHub concept store in London.  Reebok was THE brand of trainer to wear when I was in high school but they have been on a downward spiral for quite a while.  It's going to be hard but I think what they are producing for the crossfit market will be the key to rallying back, nice to see them producing gear that is fashionable AND functional again instead of plastering the name on any old thing.

Where all my "research" takes place

Reaching goals and an earworm

I'm sitting here still on a bit of a high from last night.  I managed to reach a goal of getting my chin up over the pull-up bar much, much, much sooner than I expected. Not only did I do it once--after a bit of shouting all about it on twitter--I was able to pull up 3 more times.  Sorry, I realize I'm doing a bit too much bragging about it all over the place but I'm incredibly stoked to have been able to do a full one less than a week after putting up the bar.  May not be able to do it again for another 2 weeks but I'm totally ok with that :D.

Blurry pic via a webcam still

Right enough about that.  This week's earworm is from The XX. Such a hauntingly beautiful song, can't get enough of it.

bits and pieces

Just a few items that don't really fit in any of the other posts I've written lately.

First off, you may notice that there's an actual url for my blog now :-).  Thanks to some nagging and a lot of work from the cranky person known as The Wondering Brit it got done finally.  It's both a very good thing and a curse being friends with a techy-geeky type person, not sure I recommend it.  Also I'm changing up the twitter accounts, I will be closing my old one and have started another with my @gabsatrucker name that's now unlocked.  I'm a bit stream of consciousness, no-holds barred, lotsa bad language, grumbly sort so prolly not safe for anyone who's easily offended.

Somehow I've evolved from a person who always had to have music on her solo runs to finding it distracting in the wrong way, almost kind of irritating.  Yes, I have gotten to where I like being able to hear my footfalls and breathing (when it's not atrociously humid that is).

The car has to go back in the shop because it's still cutting out a little and the check engine light came back on with my first drive after getting it out. Have I mentioned that every time I drive it at least 2 people will pull out directly in front of me.  As James said (yes, we still talk quite a bit), with my track record probably not the car I should be driving (4 instances of being hit around stops signs or lights).

Totally obsessed with Etsy.  Such an amazing array of handmade and vintage items, can spend hours on that site browsing.

Zico chocolate coconut water is to die for delicious........

as are the Ayala's Herbal waters.

And to cap this off, a huge, belated congratulations to Dr. Sue Black for being the 10th recipient of the PepsiCo WIN award for 2011!!!!!!!!!!!!  Be sure to read her post she wrote after receiving the award "If I can do it, so can you", you will see why she deserves this.  Sue is such an amazing lady and certainly an inspiration for me--still in a bit of awe that I got to meet her earlier this year.  She's also on twitter, definitely one of the must-follows :-)))).

Silent is my tweet

Sigh...........still having issues with my twitter account at the moment, I am currently unable to follow or approve anyone to follow me as of yet.  A quick perusal of the help section revealed that I'm not the only one with this issue, just waiting on the engineers to find a workaround.  While I'm frustrated and going through withdrawals I do have to give Twitter a huge thumbs up for the quick reactivation of my account.

In other news after 5 successful restarts of Lola, she decided to misbehave again.....yep, twice under the hood to get her restarted last night and at lunchtime this morning.  Ok, that's about all I have to say other than this is giving me serious motivation to pursue other means of earning filthy lucre.  Lol, I'm sure buying the Texas Lotto ticket is NOT a very viable option but it would be nice.

Workout stuff.......ran 4.14 miles in 36:27 on my favorite dirt road this morning and even stopped to take a picture of the cows who ran with me because they thought I was bringing food

Music stuff....Seether has a new song out that I'm loving, here's a live version vid.  Enjoy!!