Friday, October 20, 2006

New Shoes

I know that it is not a good idea to switch anything up in your routine the week before a marathon, but I was willing to do almost anything to ease my shin pain. A runner whom I respect highly said "Change up your shoes, it's the only thing that could be causing you pain like that." He knows my whole routine and how I've run with the same style of shoes and inserts over the past two years - which included two marathons and a half marathon. It didn't make sense that they were all of a sudden causing me pain now...unless they were wearing out...which when I compared them to a new pair of shoes, they were. (see picture, barely any treads on outside of the ball of my foot)

So I went to Pacers last night for the Thursday night fun run, but went in a little early to talk to them about my shoes. The one guy who helped me out said not to worry too much about changing my shoes this close to a race and got me another pair of my same Asics GT-2110 (check out the "explode tech view). I picked up another pair of my Blue Superfeet insoles which I first started wearing when I got tendonitis two years ago. I also tried on a pair of the super light racing shoes, but I just felt like I was wearing air and not a shoe. Some runners may like that, but I didn't.


After my inserts were all trimmed and in my bright white new shoes (which lasts for all of five minutes with me) I laced up, stretched and went out for a run. Lo and behold, no shin pain! I ran a gentle 5 miles along Eisenhower Ave and the only soreness I felt was a very familiar "breaking in new shoes" feeling. WAHOOO!!!!! I'll run two or three more times before the marathon and they should be good to go. Of course I'm going to stay religious about icing and stretching, but it was a good boost to the confidence to get back out running.

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