New shoes

Hurricane Irene was bearing down on the east coast on August 27th when I drove to Quincy Park in Arlington, VA to join my new teammates on Team Challenge for the first work-out for our 1/2 marathon training. For the first time in weeks I woke up and I didn't hurt. My shoulder wasn't achy (volleyball injury) and most importantly, my right leg wasn't tight and achy. Since my failed experiment I have been a bit hobbled. I decided to stop running on July 22nd, after three weeks of training, but I couldn't stay off the sand volleyball courts, so five weeks later, I was not as far along in recovery as I had hoped. I thought I would show up to the training session, meet everybody and make some excuse.

But, happily, I felt better than I had in weeks. After the introductions and some lessons in stretching, I laced up my 5-year-old Sketchers and took off running with the pack. As I mentioned in my last post, I've put the barefoot running on hold for now, but since the shoe clinic was scheduled for after the run, The Sketchers would have to do. We left Quincy Park and joined the Custis Trail at North Quincy Street.

Even though I felt pretty good, I didn't want to hurt myself, so I decided to run-walk until I felt better for more than just one morning. I ran-walked for 40 minutes in this pattern:

5-2-5-1-5-2 turn around
5-2-5-1-5-2

We finished the post-run stretching before Irene's rains started and headed to Potomac River Running for bagels and the shoe clinic. It was nice to be there as part of Team Challenge. The mentors and coaches had some people lined up to talk to us about running shoes and measure our feet. I got on their fancy equipment and ran on their treadmill and found out that I have normal arches, a near-perfect center of gravity, and don't pronate. They suggested neutral shoes. I chose the Saucony, headed out into the rains, looking forward to my next run.