The Pope is in DC this week, and it's been kind of awesome to see his widespread appeal to way, way more than just the Catholic population. I mean even Snapchat has a Pope filter...



Even though I spent 13 years in Catholic school, I've mainly avoided the mayhem that is any of the Pope events.
Throwback Catholic school uniform photo

I wasn't lucky enough to snag one of my office's tickets to the White House event yesterday, so I've been following along on the Interwebz, but staying away from the crowds.

The government actually told federal employees to work from home this week if possible to alleviate some of the traffic issues, and I was happy to oblige.

So I've been hanging out at home all week, getting lots of work done and enjoying my runs in some picture perfect fall weather. Baltimore half training is going well. My times aren't record breaking (in fact, I think I'll end up running one of my slower halves), but the runs have been enjoyable.

I'm still not using my Garmin on any of my mid-week shorter runs, but I have added a new toy to my running arsenal.



This is the MilestonePod. As you can see, it's a small pod that you wear on your shoe that let's you track the mileage you put on your sneakers. It also pairs with an app that lets you see more data on your phone.



I especially like this chart that tells me I heel strike 100% of the time on my runs. Can't say that's totally surprising.



I've realized you need to take the time data with a grain of salt though, since it's not like a running watch where you can pause it at a stoplight. I was looking at the average pace from my most recent run and was like oh man I moved so slowly. Then I looked at some of the charts and saw for a bit times plunging down into the 16 min/mile range and realized that duh, at traffic lights, it's just going to seem like I'm moving ridiculously slowly.  



But the thing I really love about the MilestonePod is that it easily lets you track the mileage you put on a pair of shoes. When you get a new pair, you updated your settings in the app, and the pod begins counting the miles on the new shoes. Since I'm notoriously bad at keeping track of how long I've had my shoes, this is a super easy way to pay attention to the mileage on them.

MilestonePod was sent to me to test out. All opinions are my own.