I already needed to find motivation today. I went out last night to see Brian Setzer at the Hollywood Bowl. It was a tame evening but I didn’t get to bed until 1:00am. Now I had planned on being able to sleep in today so I would be rested for my run this morning but I neglected to factor in that the heat and humidity would be in full force with a later run start time.
So what was my motivation? I had also planned on running with the new hydration belt I got from Amazon yesterday! I’ve been using a Flipbelt which I love but I can’t add water bottles to it and it doesn’t seem like it could hold that extra weight without jiggling even if it did. I know they make one that holds one curved water bottle but I really wanted something more traditional with a pocket and two small bottles.
I started on Amazon since I love to shop on Amazon and researched hydration belts and read all of the reviews. I began to find that finding one that would fit my iPhone 7+ would be a little bit of a challenge. Which made me start to think about what would I really need to carry come race day. My list was: my phone (preferably with a case), my keys (since I’ll be driving myself), my ID, water, and some energy gels that I’ve been hearing about. So I definitely needed a belt that had a decent sized pocket but I also wanted a snug fit so all of this stuff wouldn’t bounce around when I ran. I narrowed it down to a couple and they were all between $15 and $30 (yay!). Of course now that I kind of knew what I wanted I didn’t want to wait to get it so I went to my favorite local running store Fleet Feet. They had several belts and packs to look at with lots of add on options. All great looking but unfortunately the least expensive one was $60! So I as I walked back to my car to head home, I ordered my belt from Amazon. I figured if I find that this belt needs to be more heavy duty, then I will go ahead and put out the $60 for my next belt. This is the belt I got
So today was my first run with my belt! I put water in my bottles and headed out. Even though I was not planning a long run, I still wanted to get used to how it feels running with a new belt with stuff in it. At first it did feel odd having these water bottles sticking out. But I soon got used to it. I prefer to have the belt around my hips than my waist so I made an adjustment for that. The funny thing is that I actually drank the water during my run which I haven’t done due to short distance and time.
So my run was not the best this morning. I was hot and it was hard to breathe through the humidity and I was still tired from last night. But my new belt got me out the door happily. I slowed my pace down due to the heat and I struggled. It was not an easy run for me but I did it. And I got to break in my hydration belt!
Running Rain 