New gear and a major shout out

Let's start with the shout out, shall we? I just spoke to my brother-in-law on the phone today who ran the Ogden Marathon this morning. This was his second marathon (first without spoiled egg salad sandwich in his belly) and was really flying. Get this, he ran it in 3:08! Nice Job! That's about a minute better than my PR. He's only been running for a couple years now, but he is totally hooked, and one heck of a runner. He told me once that since he was so new to running, he didn't know what a good race time was, so he took my PR list and based his goals on that. I've still got him at a couple distances, but he is quickly passing me up. I'm glad I can provide a little motivation. As soon as I get back into shape, he's gonna be motivation for me, too.

On to the gear. You may recall my pratfall from a year or so ago. That incident, for some reason, resulted in some really tight hamstrings for a while, but the tightness eventually went away. The last couple weeks, I've had some tightness reminiscent of that period of time. So, I started looking into compression shorts to see if they could make a difference and speed the recovery process. I found a pair of Adidas Techfit compression shorts (I must have gotten an older edition of the shorts as they are slightly different than the ones you see on the Adidas website) at Ross last night (another steal--only $15 as opposed to the original $80 price tag), and got to try them out today. I must say, I really like them. They took a little getting used to because they have these "Powerweb" bands that support the muscles and increase blood flow, and I'd never worn anything like it before. After warming up, I didn't feel a thing in my hamstring. I kept them on several hours after the run while I was outside trimming our killer spikey Arizona desert trees. I didn't get to my stretching until after the yard work, and when I bent over to stretch out the hammies, there was hardly any of the regular discomfort! So, Adidas, you have officially won a new fan. Maybe someday, Ross will have the newer version, and I can pick up another pair.