Monday, August 10, 2009

Week 2, Day 1: New Shoes, New Woman

I wish this blog had the capability to play background music because you'd all be totally hearing the theme from Rocky right now. Do do DO do! Do do DO do do! Do do DO do... well, you get it.

I feel like Thursday was so long ago, so I'm glad I was able to jump up early on a Monday morning and knock out the Week 2 program for C25K. I wasn't really nervous about it. I looked at the program last night to see what was different. 90 seconds of running compared to 60 seconds from last week, but the walking interval also went up to 2 minutes instead of 1.5 minutes. I was looking forward to doing the longer intervals, and it felt good while I was doing it too. I felt like I could get into a groove more, instead of always looking at the watch and starting & stopping every minute. That being said, 90 seconds definitely felt like a long time to be running. I wasn't dying at the end of each spurt, but I always welcomed the walk break. I'm curious to see if I still feel that way after Day 3 this week. Craig and Lucy came with me again today. At about the 20 minute mark, I said to Craig, "This feels good, right?" and he said, "Yeah, except for the pain. And the lack of pleasure." C'mon, Eeyore, only another 1/2 mile til we're back at House at Pooh Corner.

Kidding aside, part of the reason for Craig's pain was his new shoes. We both went to Marathon Sports on Saturday to get new running shoes. A word of advice for anyone thinking of running: Go to a good running store and have a knowledgable sales person help you find a shoe. It's hard to resist those $30 sneakers in the bargain bin, but when you have to buy 4 pairs of them until you find one that doesn't cause pain, you're better off spending $100 from the start. The people at Marathon Sports will watch you walk and pick a shoe that fits the motion of your foot and how it strikes the ground. I've suffered from plantar fasciitis in the past, so good shoes are exceptionally important to me. My favorite running shoe of all time was the Adidas Supernova. I did both the Chicago Marathon and the Vermont City Marathon in Adidas Supernovas, but then they changed the design. For the past year, I've been wearing the next closet thing to Adidas Supernovas, the Adidas Supernova Sequence, but that design has also changed. When I tried it on in the store, I immediately felt like it was too cushiony, which the sales rep confirmed when she watched me walk in them. I ended up with a pair of Asics that I tried out Sunday morning on a very brief walk/run, and my plantar fasciitis immediately flared up. It was the first time that the thought of an injury even occurred to me. So I returned those shoes and finally ended up with a pair of Brooks Adrenaline, which I tested this morning, and had no problems with. Phew, that was a really long paragraph about footwear.

I still haven't picked set running days. I want to run again tomorrow. I don't know why, but I feel so pumped up from my Monday morning run that I don't want to wait two more days to run again. Did I really just say that? YES! I! DID!

2 comments:

  1. Hey, I have Adidas Supernovas! I dig them, although my only prior experience was with an el cheapo bargain bin pair of New Balance shoes that had way, way, way too much arch support for me.

    "Not dying at the end" is excellent progress, IMO.

    I can't believe you have actually run marathons, btw. If I ever run a marathon, I'm getting it tattooed on my forehead, and plan to drop it into as many conversations as possible. "So what do you think of the new season of True Blood?" "Well, as someone who has previously run a marathon, I think they have changed too much from the books."

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  2. hahaha Jan! I feel the same way about the post-marathon attitude. But that's the problem with being morbidly obese. I feel like I can't use the marathon line if I don't look like I *could* run a marathon. Otherwise I might as well get a forehead tattoo that says, "I've really let myself go."

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