The sports department

Over the years of my life, my shopping habits have changed several times. When I was younger, clothes and shoes were most important to me. The mall was my favorite place to be. When I owned my houses, the home improvement stores were then my favorite. Over the last couple of years, I would have to say that shopping at Target is probably the store I visit the most. My life is pretty simple these days and I find myself mainly buying the practical things for my day to day.

Now though, I am being introduced to a whole new shopping experience... in the sports department! I wouldn't think that training for a half marathon would require buying so much. As Dana said today, "running is free." So why am I coming up with all kinds of things to buy? Well, as I previously mentioned, my first purchase was a good pair of shoes. Obviously, those are important. Since then, I've realized I also need some new running clothes. But I haven't bought many of those yet. Today though, the kids and I went shopping for other necessities. We needed head lamps for our evening runs. Team in Training holds what they call Buddy Runs on Tuesday evenings. They are not required training, but a way for many of the teammates to informally get together for mid-week training. So, since we are planning on meeting up for the Buddy Runs, we were told that we would need head lamps in order to see at night. Ok. But then we also needed hats if we didn't want to look so silly with just the head lamps on our heads, ha! I'm not a hat person, so I needed to buy a hat. Ok, what else? Oh, well I hate when I begin to sweat during my runs and don't have any way to wipe my forehead. So I also needed wrist sweatbands. And... I needed a waistpack/waterbottle holder. Sooo many choices! But I did find one I liked.

Lastly, for today, I also wanted to get a sports watch to help with my pacing for my walk/runs. We looked at many of them, but couldn't decide on one. So that will be left for another day.

The list is not over, but that was how I spent much of my day--in several stores, in the sports departments! Although I spent more money than expected, it was sure a new experience for me, and I did have fun.

Later, I went to the gym to run a quick three miles on the treadmill. I laugh at myself for saying it was a quick three miles, but it was. I didn't take any major time out of my day for training, but as I went there, I knew I was doing something good for myself. All the years of doing nothing to stay in shape seems really lazy to me at the moment. Oh well, I'm doing something now and feeling good about it. This is all that matters!