Every Wish That We Put Into Motion.... (comments welcome!)

[Herding_Cats]

I had previously been wearing Brooks, so I just went with the same brand.

Because of the uphills and especially downhills, make sure you have room in your trail shoes. If you end up jamming your toes into the front of your shoes on on the downhills, you're going to lose a lot of toenails quickly.

I've been in NB forever, but just looking at the Hierro (their trail shoe) they look so....flat on the bottom. I like a rocker, but I understand that flat could = more stability on trails? It also looks like the newer models have the big cushy (ugh) heel/achilles tab that my legs hate.

I really like my shoes to probably be a little bit too big, but there's probably going to be a balance of big-but-not-too-big I'll need to find so my foot isn't sliding around.


Sierra had some injinji socks, so I grabbed a pair of those (along with some sandals for DD for this summer) to try out.

 

[azrivest]

I've been in NB forever, but just looking at the Hierro (their trail shoe) they look so....flat on the bottom. I like a rocker, but I understand that flat could = more stability on trails? It also looks like the newer models have the big cushy (ugh) heel/achilles tab that my legs hate.

I bought the Hierro v7 by accident last year, when I went away for a weekend of trail running and forgot my trail shoes and bought the pair that fit me the best at the local store. I loved them so much I used them for my trail race two weeks after that.

And yeah, trail shoes will, in my experience, have a wider foot base to be more stable on uneven ground. I also use the Cascadias a lot like avondale.

 

[avondale]

Not sure a rocker is a good idea on trails... you need stability and some ability to feel what's underfoot so your foot knows where it is. (i.e., did you actually step to the side of that root or on it?) Road running shoes usually have one purpose of propelling you forward and they assume you're on a reasonably flat, stable surface, so they don't worry about your foot doing sideways motion. On a trail, you need to make sure you have stability to keep from rolling your foot/ankle sideways when you stop on something that's not flat, so trail shoes are built for that.

You could use road running shoes on the trail, yes. Then you have more stability risk. Plus trail shoes have deeper lugs for more traction (good for rainy days, for example) and often they have a rock plate (so you don't get rocks and roots poking up on you so much).

 

[Herding_Cats]

Getting back on the horse, without overdoing it. Hopefully.

Today I hopped on the treadmill with the NB Balos I bought a month ago. And I just don't like them. They are too tight to my big toe, and bend in a weird spot. So I need to make sure I have all of the paperwork they came with and ship them back (at my expense *sigh.*) I switched to a very old pair of 880s to see how it felt to have a much less-cushy shoe, and they surprisingly felt pretty OK. Still different from the 1080s, but if I want to try dialing back my reliance on squishy foam for everything, this might be an easy way to do it. I did a 5min warmup walk, and then got to work on today's task: uphill.

12% for 1min a 2.5
10% for 2min at 2.5
8% for 3min a 2.7
6% for 4min at 3.0
4% for 5min at 3.2
2% for 6min at 3.5
0% until I hit 30min total time at 3.7
Notes: this wasn't hard at all. I went short on the durations and low on the speeds because I didn't want to blow things up on "day 1" and it gives me a good starting point to work off.

And easing back into strength training:
-resistance-band knee drives (to work on hip flexors and strength to pick up my feet) 2 sets of 25 on each leg.
-1 set of 10 reps each of bicep curls, tricep extensions, shoulder press, front raise, lateral raise, bent over rows, hammer curls, and back flys. Nothing crazy, as this will probably make me a little sore.
-hip/quad mobility where I sit on the floor and then lift my (straight) leg/foot up and over a foam ball (my quads tried to lock up while I did this....super fun)
-3 or 4min of static calf stretch on my foam incline blocks


I did order 2 pairs of trail shoes that will be delivered this week (tomorrow and Wednesday) to try. I got the endorphin edge ($70) and a pair of heirro 8 ($78) since those are getting clearanced out since the new model has been out for a bit now. There was an extra 30% off coupon, or they would have been like $112 I think. We got 3in of snow yesterday, which sucks because it was 72 on Saturday, and even the snowplow banks in our yard were nearly gone. But I'm hoping that by the time we get back from spring break I'll be able to get on a trial 2x a week and we need about a week of at least 50 degree, sunny days to get rid of the snow and ice in the woods. Possibly more since I think the one I want to go on is used for XC skiing in the winter and may have been groomed, which would drive more frost into the ground and make things take longer to melt there.

 

[avondale]

Nice work on the uphill power walking!

 

[nancipants]

FYI - I recently discovered Lisa Hart on instagram on YouTube thanks to her winning the Princess Half. She has reels with suggested strength exercises and follow-alongs on YouTube specifically for runners. I’ve done a few of them and like them! Plus she usually does multiple rounds, so you can cut the workout short if you’re running low on time.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Shoe report:
Endorphin Edge has an enormously deep toe box, bordering on too big/sloppy for the forefoot. I could probably order them a half size smaller, but then they would probably be bordering on too small. And the shoe itself feels really "hard" underfoot. Like there's pretty much no cushion at all. That sounds horrible for a 50k. They are getting returned.

The Hierros (v8) do NOT have a deep toe box in any way, but otherwise feel great (quite a lot like the NB 880). My largest issue is that the "toe protect" molding for the big toe is applying pressure to my big toe nail, and I'm very concerned that this will mean under-nail blisters or black toe nails. I'm not sure if this is something that would loosen up with some wear, or if I could shove something into the toe of the shoe to stretch/reshape that piece a little bit. @azrivest can you comment on this at all? I really want to love these shoes but I don't want to wear something that I'm confident will cause issues.


Also, nothing says "WELCOME SPRING!" like 4in of heavy, wet snow and 50mph winds, resulting in 18hrs with no power and a snow day from school. Thank goodness for a generator as the forecast from the power company was 24hrs, but DH got everything hooked up when he got home from work so we had heat/power/water for the evening. By observing the neighbors' houses through the trees we could see when power was restored and DH went out and unhooked everything and switched us back over to "regular" power.

 

[The Expert]

I've been curious about the Brooks Caldera as they seem to have a bit more cushion than other trail shoes. Have you considered those? Last year's model was just on sale at REI and they are running their member promo 20% off sale right now.

I hear you on the weather! I was outside boiling down sap in 70 degree weather yesterday, then woke up to 5 inches of snow and counting. Glad you have that generator! Thankfully now power outage here, but we've got backup batteries that kick in when it does go out. I wouldn't even know it without the app alert, it's usually so seamless.

 

[Herding_Cats]

I've been curious about the Brooks Caldera as they seem to have a bit more cushion than other trail shoes. Have you considered those? Last year's model was just on sale at REI and they are running their member promo 20% off sale right now.

I have never liked a pair of brooks that I’ve tried on.

 

[Herding_Cats]

>insert Jaws theme<



But today was way more fun because we actually played at the water park instead of out touring the parking lot. This (free on check-in day) is a great on-site perk that I hope Disney keeps for awhile.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Ooooh Southwest Airlines. If only you had cancelled our flights 3 hours sooner I could have avoided a 2hr drive to Sarasota and gotten an extra night at Disney!

Yes. We drove across the state, walked into SRQ and I pulled up the app to get luggage tags for our already-delayed flights only to immediately get a notification that our flights were cancelled, our replacement has 2 stops tomorrow, and we won’t land in Detroit until 7pm, and then still have a 4hr drive home.

I soooo would have tried to get our flights changed to MCO to go with an extra resort night but alas here we are.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Also, we aren’t affected, but a few hours north of home is on day 3 of looking like this:


Some areas got an inch of ice, and soooooo many people are stranded due to down trees and power lines, and over 200k people are without power. This is a more rural part of the state, so things are more spread out/wooded which means this is going to take a long time to get cleaned up and power back on.

 

[jmasgat]

Wow. Safe travels back. We are just outside Detroit, and fortunately we just had a quick bout of strong winds and some rain. I read they closed Mackinac Bridge for falling ice.

 

[The Expert]

Also, we aren’t affected, but a few hours north of home is on day 3 of looking like this:
View attachment 952995

Some areas got an inch of ice, and soooooo many people are stranded due to down trees and power lines, and over 200k people are without power. This is a more rural part of the state, so things are more spread out/wooded which means this is going to take a long time to get cleaned up and power back on.

I almost messaged you when I saw this on the news. SO glad you weren't impacted! We had the threat of this here this last weekend, but it actually hit south (we got all snow). Ice sucks!

 

[accm]

Safe travels back home! It sucks that they didn't tell you about your flight being cancelled sooner.

We got the ice storm here too, although not as bad as some other places. Still enough that schools were all closed yesterday. I can deal with the snow, but ice sucks so much.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Trip report! And then probably a separate post about my (lack of) training.

Spring break was amazing and felt like summer, sun, all things hot....seriously. We could not have asked for better weather, even if our watching MSU lose to Auburn in the elite 8 was interrupted by tornado coverage.

We ended up heading toward Detroit a day early so we could break up the travel (trying to avoid 4hrs in the car + 5.5hrs on airplanes + 1-1.5hrs in the car all in one day) so we spent the night about an hour from DTW and ate dinner with DS1, watched some of the NCAA basketball tournament, and let the kids play in the pool.

My parent's place in Florida is 1-2hrs away from most of the "vacation-y" things to do, so we spent a lot of time driving around to do things. On Wednesday DH and DS3 went deep sea fishing with my dad and a cousin who has a house in Venice while myself, DD, DS2, and my mom spent the afternoon at the beach with some other cousins. We found a lot of shark teeth and mostly managed to avoid getting sunburnt. We went to the Tampa zoo on Thursday where DD had a great time riding the carousel and practically sprinted from one animal enclosure to the next. We stopped for mini golf and slushies at Sonic (where they messed up our order, but it was probably for the best since I don't think I could have managed 30z of slushy I thought I was getting and instead was perfectly happy with the 16oz I got.) And on Friday we went to Manasota Key beach where many social media reports were saying there were a very high amount of shark teeth being found and spent a good 5 hours sifting through sand and shells to find a few hundred more teeth! DH and I agreed that if we knew it would be so fun to look for shark teeth that we would have skipped the zoo and just done a 2nd beach day as a whole family. I'm not sure the kids would have agreed though, as that would have been a lot of sun for them.

We worked on packing things up on Friday night in preparation for our move to SSR for 2 nights (free day at Blizzard Beach!) and were out the door from my parents' at 8am Saturday morning. Blizzard Beach was really fun, and this is a great time-filler for families who are flying in and need a few hours to fill before they check into their room. The lazy river is at least a 20min ride to get all the way around, and DD had a blast going on the kiddie slides, and was thrilled to see the Frozen character-themed area when we peeked in to the toddler section. DS2 and 3 got a reality check on pricing when we got lunch from the quick service at the water park since I had placed an instacart order from Costco to be delivered to the resort near check-in time and lunch was more than what we paid for the stuff for 2 meals + breakfast for both mornings. Our room was ready a little after 4 (unsurprising since we had a 1br) and our room request was honored, which was great. The boys were happy to not have to share a sleeping surface, and DS2 commented on how nice the resort was and how convenient it was to Disney Springs, and was also very impressed with fitness center.

We hit our highlights for a low-key resort-only trip: a little shopping in springs in the mornings (when it's less busy,) warm cookie hour at gideon's, morimoto street food and polite pig for lunches, and a lot of time in the pool. So much time in the pool.

Our flight was scheduled to leave Sarasota airport a little after 7pm on Monday, but I was getting delay notices that morning, so we just added more pool time after we checked out of the room. We had planned to meet my parents near the airport for an early dinner (our flight was scheduled to land after midnight in Detroit, with only a 1hr stop in Baltimore on the way) and to give them the cooler we had picked up. If you've never been to the Sarasota/Bradenton airport before, it's tiny. That means doing things like dropping off your rental car is really fast. And we had just returned our rental car, hauled all our bags inside the terminal and I was opening the app so we could print bag tags when I got a message that our flights had been cancelled. And while I was having my mental of course this is happening moment I got the message with our replacement flights. Which had TWO stops and would take over 11 hours to complete, landing in Detroit at 7pm where we would still have a 4hr drive home. We looked at other flights. Other airports. Other carriers. And nothing was available, or was extremely cost-prohibitive. We quickly re-booked a rental car for the night (so we would have one!) and then worked on finding a nearby hotel that we could book using Chase points. As it turned out, we could have skipped the rental car because the hotel was 0.3mi away and had a shuttle. *sigh* Flying with a 5 year old with a 2hr stop and a 3hr stop is as much work as it sounds like. Don't get me wrong, she's a good little traveler, but she spent a lot of time crawling all over us.

But now we are home and I have 7 suitcases to unpack. And 2 dogs who want every bit of my attention. And a 5yo who I did NOT send to preschool this morning (because we didn't get home until midnight.) I need to get groceries, and we have another snow storm system moving in. Yes. Snow. In April. Yaaaaaay Michigan.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Sifting for shark teeth




Using her Marie blanket baby as a phone holder While watching Aristocats!



It appears that we took most of our pictures with DH’s phone this trip.

 

[The Expert]

It's always an epic adventure!

Using her Marie blanket baby as a phone holder

This is genius.

 

[Herding_Cats]

This post is me externally processing options for our MW stay. Feel free to skip it if you don't want to read about my justifications for staying a 1br over a studio, and how meals and park days confound them.

I have ruined myself for Studios when it's more than just myself and DH traveling.

Spoiler: Watch me justify upgrading our room to a 1br

And now for my "let's consider turning our weeklong studio stay for MW into a split stay!" conundrum. Want to juggle points with me? Our stay is planned for Tuesday to Tuesday, currently in a preferred studio (99pts.) I have 6 remaining points for the UY this stay falls in. I have 100pts (Dec) I could borrow, and another 50pts (Aug) that I'm not sure I could transfer and then borrow because I already transferred [Aug 2025]points from one contract to another (different UY, same resort, because I found a good deal.) Brace yourself for trip budgeting from a person with an English degree.

Factors to consider include...

Sleep:
DD will be coming with us for MW. When it's just myself and DH we have no issues staying in a studio, and it's not a big deal for him to get up in the morning for the HM and M because he drops me off at Epcot, drives back to the resort, and goes back to bed. I do NOT want to wake up DD on Saturday and Sunday mornings because it's a gamble of whether or not she will go back to sleep. If we stayed in a 1br, it would be a simple fix for me to sleep on the murphy bed for those 2 "nights" as to not wake them up. It would also allow DH/DD to not have to be lights-out at 6 or 7pm (or for me to stay awake) those 2 nights since there is a separate room.

Useful amenities that a 1br has and a studio lacks:
Bonus points for the bath tub for epsom salt soaks, and for the full kitchen which could theoretically save us hundreds of dollars. (DH likes to eat at the restaurants when it's just the 2 of us, but DD is terrible at sitting down for meals and I would say we average $200/day on meals. Doing a costco order for mostly-prepared stuff that I know won't bother my stomach could save us a LOT of money.) Could we also have that stuff in a studio? Sort of. It would technically be microwave-able, but then we run into the issue of the very limited fridge space that studios have, and we'd end up having to purchase a cooler to keep things in, deal with ice, etc.

There's also the washer and dryer IN the room, which is helpful as we don't have to hang around for things to wash/dry in the communal ones by the pools. Put a load in the washer and go to a park? Easy. Scheduling your pool visit around your laundry needs? Doable.

But park days and proximity?
DH wants to do "more" park days this trip since DD is at the prime age for all of the magic. So the potential savings of preparing food is likely nullified to some degree by the fact that we would eat in the parks on park days.

Travel/Race schedule:
Tuesday arrival, just before 1pm.
Wednesday Expo and resort day
Thursday 5k for all 3 of us--possible park day?
Friday park day
Saturday HM for me--resort day
Sunday M for me--possible park day for DH and DD??
Monday modified DATW or just a park day with DD
Tuesday departure (could possibly squeeze in a half park day depending on what flight we end up on)

How that schedule relates to meals:
Lunches 7 total, minus 4 for parks = 3
Dinners 7 total, minus 4 for parks = 3
Conservatively let's say we spend $200/day for meals, that comes to $600 we would spend, which could easily be offset by preparing things in the room for $100 (based on the grocery order we just did.) If we took midday breaks with DD, which I feel would be unlikely, let's say it's $60/lunch x 4 = $240. And round the grocery order up to $150. So 840-150= $690 in potential savings on the low side, and we still eat 4 sit-down dinners.

Point math:
If we didn't change rooms and borrowed points, a standard 1br would require me to borrow 73 points, and a preferred 1br would require me to borrow all 100pts available, AND purchase 3 OTU points (at a cost of $54.)

If we DID change rooms, it would be on Friday.
A standard 1br would be 106pts and preferred 124pts
A standard Studio would be 36pts and preferred would be 39pts

That comes out to 142pts for a standard split stay (borrowing 37)
or to a total of 165pts for a preferred split stay. (borrowing 60)

DH really likes staying in the preferred rooms (the views in congress park are lovely, and we really like the short walk to DS) but if we are doing a more park-heavy trip I feel like some of this is "wasted" cost because we won't be utilizing it in the same way we did this year with only 2 park days. I 100% will not move rooms more than once IF we decide that a 1br makes more sense for the 2nd half of the trip. So there's no option where we move from a studio to a 1br on Friday, and then move out of the 1br on Monday to "save" another 12 points.

"Hoarding" points for future trips:
Marathon weekend 2027 is unlikely as we are planning on taking that trip to national parks in UT/AZ for DS2's graduation, and we'll need to reallocate that race weekend money to fund it, so borrowing isn't a huge deal. However, it would just be nice to save some points so we can do a bigger trip, or a different race weekend (which all require more points than MW) in 2028. It would be just 4 of us at that point.

 

[nancipants]

I will be an enabler and say do the 1br.

(Also, if you bring DD to DATW, I will totally keep my kid out of school that day and bring him with me, that way they can occupy each other. )