My legs, my poor little legs

They're sore.  I don't know. That's it really.  Ran a 10K on Saturday, mostly hills, because Gloucester, calves have been sore ever since.  Welcome to running.  I tried stretching, foam rolling, shakeout runs, more working out even, but still, they fire on.  I guess this is my life now.  Oh well.  But for real. I bought new shoes to see if I could eliminate the blister problem that my good old Hoka's were causing.  Plus, I found a New Balance warehouse that was close to the house and was having a 30% off everything sale, so why not?  I wore those lovely new shoes for the 10K and surprise, got a blister.  Then in a moment of clarity, I realized that I could feel the insole back under my toes, which is not where it belongs.  After the race I looked at the shoes and the insoles had slid way back leaving a nice little gap of at least 6 inches.  So I deduced that the blister problem isn't actually from the sneakers, but from the insole sliding around.  As a crafty person I figured a quick fix would be some super glue, so I got some, glued those suckers down, and 4 days later went for another run.  I used the same shoes, took them for 8 miles on the Battle Road just to see how well the glue held up.  Seems to have done a decent job, no blisters in sight. Sadly, I think the Battle Road causes my knee to hurt, something about whatever it's made out of, so that after 4.5 there was a mix of walk/running again.  Which is too bad because up until that point, I was actually doing well on this run, making good time and not being too hot, which is a change from the usual.  But now according to science, the heat dome is coming, so it's back to turtle pace I guess.  Well, turtle pace for me anyways.


Let's see, nothing else really happening here.  I did not run the woods yesterday because we took a day trip to White Lake instead.  Next week is my camping week, so I probably won't be running the woods then either, but that's to be determined.  We have tickets to see the Impractical Jokers next Thursday night, so I haven't decided if I'm going to come home Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning.  Depends on the weather up there I suppose.  Other than that I've just been reading and coming up with ideas for crafts that I'm not actually making.  Oh yea, a groundhog ate all of my pumpkin and watermelon plants that were just starting to flower, so I'm kind of mad about that.  I just wanted to have a few nice plants.  Now I'll have to wait until next Spring AND make sure I get some chicken wire to keep the things out.   Although I read that groundhogs will chew through wood and wire too, so who knows if that's actually the solution.  For now I'm just going to be annoyed about it anyways.

Ok, done with that.  Here are your pictures for the week.

Woods run from last week.  Temperature provided for your entertainment.

Obama Face Swap.  Obama now looks like Kenny. 

Ohh hey new shoes.  

10K start

10K finish

Cousin face swap.  These are the only pictures I have right now, sorry!

y=mx+b

Yup, that's the formula of a line.  I'm sure you think this is a clever tie-in to running hills or something equally as funny, but alas, it's not. It really is just the formula for finding the y-intercept when you already have the coordinates and know the slope.  Why is this the title of today's post then, you might be asking.  Well, since it is summer and I have free time galore, I decided to fill that time with some good old professional development.  It sure was nice to have vacation while it lasted.  Ahhh the good old days.  Anyways, so I signed up for this middle school mathematics class because there were extra spots open and I figured I could use the PDPs.  Turns out though, they actually expect you to KNOW middle school math.  Now isn't that something?  We spent the majority of today graphing lines and find line stories and I was woefully lost.  Newsflash, algebra is not my strong suit.  Everything made sense when there were numbers in place, but then the person leading the class took away the numbers and turned everything into letters, and there I was, staring at the page like a cow in a tornado.  (Alright, that's a terrible metaphor, but basically, I was lost and had no idea what I was doing there.) And so here I am, googling all the different ways to find the y-intercept.  Which is all great except that it still doesn't make sense when I replace the numbers with letters, so I don't really know what to do about that.  Just be glad I'm not teaching children how to solve linear equations!

Anyways, I'm taking a break from solving line equations now and just throwing in a quick update since I missed two weeks again.  Sorry about that, but I am rather busy, and I'm pretty sure about 10 people read this anyways.  If you're interested in the woods runs, two weeks ago was the 2nd tour, which was fun but HOT.  Well, not so much hot as it was high humidity.  It was 6.5 miles of struggling through sweat and dodging slippery rocks because it had just finished raining before the race.  I do like the tours, even if they do have an elevation gain of 720 feet.

Last week was the regular old 4 mile run that always falls around the 4th of July.  I'd love to say it was easier than the tour, but I'd be lying.  By all means, it should have been easier, but for me it wasn't.  That run goes up by Stone Tower and Steel Tower, which are both large hills. I don't know, it could have been the heat again, or perhaps I've just given up at running consistently because I found myself walking quite a bit again.  At this point, I've taken on a whatever attitude towards it, which obviously isn't helping.  I've even been walking the bits of the Battle Road trail in Lexington, which is just ridiculous because it's fairly flat there.  Hot tip: Great spot for Poke stops if you're playing the hot new game of 2016.  There's one at every historical marker and if you've been on that trail, there are historical markers basically every 20 feet, and that's no lie.

Aside from the running, I've been catching up on months worth of missed reading.  I hit up all those must read book lists that Buzzfeed publishes, compiled a list of books that seemed most interesting, and hit the library.  Some of the books I ended up with were just new releases that looked good when I picked them up, others are from the lists, but in case you're wondering, here's what I've read so far.  Sorry, I don't record the author, only the title, so I can't help you with that.
-Lilac Girls
-Carry On
-Lovecraft Country
-Midair
-Modern Lovers
-The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
-Kindred
-Pym
-Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles)
-Scarlett (The Lunar Chronicles)

So far I've enjoyed reading all of them but obviously I've liked some better than others.  I'd recommend them all, but fair warning, most of them are kind of bummer stories, turns out, and not great beach reads.  Carry On would probably be ok on the beach, but the others aren't exactly light-hearted fluff.  Still, if you're bored, check out any one of them for something to do.  I do suppose I should get back to lines now, so enjoy the pictures until next time.

Oh ya, we went go-carting too. That was fun, but surprisingly tiring.

Just a picture of the beach.

After 6.5 tour.  My shoulder looks ripped, but I don't feel like it does the sweat justice, I really was covered.

4 miles, not as sweaty.

WARNING!!!

There is a picture of my blister following this, so if you do not want to see it, don't look any further!

This stupid blister has been on the side of my foot since the Boston Marathon. I've done everything to make it go away and it just won't.  I honestly think the only solution at this point is to get new running shoes.  I've tried taping, soaking, lotion, everything I can think of to get this thing to go away and stop reappearing and nothings worked.  So if you have any other suggestions, please, I'm all ears!