Week 1, Shoes and Skirts...Oh My!

Week 1
This (past) week was officially the first week of training for my spring halfs.  Despite it starting out rocky (up all night with a 2 year old who was puking/dry heaving every 20 minutes) it ended up good.  I was left with a cold....again.  But I'll take that over puking any day!  So training this week was really no different than my other weeks.  Ran 3 days, crossed trained 4 days, total mileage only 18 miles or so.  I'm doing an ever so gradual build up in miles, hopefully to prevent injury!  I feel good and strong and am excited about this training cycle.  I also started reading the Dean Karnazes' book as a way to inspire me during training.  I really liked reading my marathon training book each week when I was training for my first marathon.  I'm not a big reader, so reading one chapter a week is perfect for me!  As an aside to training - I hit my WW "goal" weight this week.  I was able to lose about 11 pounds since January 1st.  Now, I still want to lose about 12 more pounds, but for WW purposes (and cost) I set my goal a bit higher.

Shoes
 It's that time of the year again!  My current Mizunos have about  375 miles on them and I can feel it!  The balls of my feet are staring to hurt.  I hate getting new shoes in the middle of winter....only to have them dirtied by the mud/slush/snow.  But, I want to avoid injury.  I'm heavily considering changing to the Brooks Trance 9's.  These were the shoes that were so cushy when I got my last ones.  I guess there have been some improvements to my current Mizunos, so we'll have to see.

Skirts
Yes, it's true.  The girl who only owns one dress and one skirt (essentially because I never bought any new skirts or dresses after I lost weight) has decided to get a running skirt.  I don't consider myself "girly".  I mean I love the color pink and I like to smell good....but that's about it! After much consideration, it seems like the best of both worlds.  So now, I need recommendations!  I have no idea what to look for in a skirt, but I know I'd be highly annoyed at anything riding up while I was running!  A pocket would be nice, but not necessary.  I'm not in a hurry to get my skirt...seeing as I live in Ohio and although yesterday I ran without gloves or a hat, running weather for skirts and shorts is a long way off!