Last night was to be the first night for a 2 mile run, and that didn’t happen. What DID happen was a mile run, and a tortuously painful half mile walk. Ever since W3R1 where I did the whole mile and a half nonstop, each run has gotten harder and harder. By the end of the walk last night, the entire side of my foot was completely numb, and I felt like I was running entirely on the bone in the ball of my foot. Each foot-fall was pain. Not discomfort, PAIN, and it was creeping up into my ankle. My thighs were fine, my lungs were great, my calves were in good shape, buy my feet, my bloody traitorous feet, were not.
So, when I got done, my wife and I talked, and we decided that I am going to try a different pair of shoes to run in. I’m currently wearing a pair of tennis shoes, as in, for playing the sport tennis (with the wide tip of the shoe good for stopping horizontal momentum), and it’s not working. Basically, it’s this shoe. I’m going to try a pair of Pumas I have, but I’m not sold on how much better they will be. They are most definitely lighter, but I’m unsure of the support it will give me. Either way, the Pumas are a hail-mary at temporary stop-gap until this weekend where we can get to a running store and have some professional do what they do and see if they can help me with this. I’m past the point thinking it’s just something I need to push through, as it’s getting consistently worse with every run, as opposed to easier. I’m falling pretty firmly in the camp of “this is something that needs to be fixed/adjusted for”.
God cursed me with terrible running genes, but I’m going to do everything I can to defy that limitation.
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Alright ….
Rule number 1: Shoes
Buy the right equipment. You wouldn’t try to play a game on an old computer and wonder why you lag out. So why try and do a sport with old or improper equipment. Difference is here, you will hurt yourself, not just run slower.
The 2 unfortunate portions of this are …
Expense. Running shoes aren’t cheap. If you didn’t break the $120 thesold, then you probably bought the cheap eMachine from Office Max, in a matter of metaphors.
The second is, you don’t know what you need. Think of yourself as idiot to the culture of running. As we all have to learn. You are like a teenage girl that has no idea why the on/off button on a computer is a circle with a straight line. They need advise on what to purchase for a computer. As you and I, have no idea the real in and outs of the shoe making world. It requires more than an enthuesiast of the sport, it requires someone to know what they are talking about. So, you need to find a running store, or a running convention. These places will actually run you and watch you and find the actual degree of your pronation or anything else in your step.
Buying online on your own is generally dangerous. You’ll get the shoes, convince yourself they feel great. 4 months later on mile 14, you’ll find out your wrong. Want to know what’s worse then laying beside a tree in agonizing pain from every muscle on your body? Having that plus having two completely useless feet. It’s one thing to inch up the Metro stairs, its totally another not being able to even walk to the elevator.
Get fitted early. That way in your training, you may find that the shoes you spent $150+ for 3 months or 6 months ago on, were still just a little off; you could only realize that once you hit mile 12 though. That way you still have time to find the right pair before a marathon.
Many runners have the advantage of years of running. So they have already figured out the shoes part. Even though I was fitted last year, I’ll be getting a shoe that is bit more tight and less pronate friendly for this year. The shoes felt great up until mile 21 on the marathon. It was then, in every step that I felt the over pronation help in the shoe was too much. As well, the room in the front of the shoe, that was to give room for a swelling foot in the run was too much. And helped lead to tremendous blisters.
You may also have more issues than just shoe help though. But old old tennis shoes are not going to help that.
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