Week 2 Wrapup: New shoes

Yesterday I got my second pair of running shoes ever. The first pair I got were the New Balance 950 in 2001. I had started running then and needed something to run in so I just bought the first pair I saw that didn't cost very much and didn't look totally dorky. I hadn't really run much, so I had no way of knowing how I would run, or what problems I might run into. So, there was no point in doing anything other than just picking shoes at random.

Those New Balance aren't totally worn out yet, but I did put some wear on them, and I fear that the cushioning has just degraded a little over time since they are 6 1/2 years old. More importantly, I'm guessing I might be able to find a better shoe for my needs now.

I always had shin splints every day that I ran back in the day, and just got into the habit of taking 800mg of ibuprofen 1 hour before running to cope with it. Now that I'm running again, I notice the same thing happening, so I'm hoping some new shoes could help with that.

I first went to the aptly named The Running Shop. It was a kind of small shop, crowded with about 1000 pairs of shoes, and a crapload of apparel and accessories and stuff. There were about 30 people in there, too. The shop was in a bit of disarray, but in a way that gave me the impression that everyone there was dedicated more to running than to shopkeeping. The crowd of customers would seem to bear that out as well. I would have stuck around there, but I had Joey with me and he kept wanting to ride the wheeled stools that the employees would sit on when they tried shoes onto you.

So, I went to Performance Footwear. This store is everything that The Running Shop is not: clean, spacious, well organized, open, airy... and completely devoid of people. The entire time I was there, it was just me and the sales dude. I might have just turned right around and headed back to The Running Shop, but by that time Joey had fallen asleep, and Performance Footwear had a big leather couch that I was able to just dump him on to sleep while I shoe shopped.

The sales dude was a young guy, probably a college student. He never gave me a lot of confidence that he knew what he was talking about. He may be the smartest guy in running-land, but the way he said things just sounded like he was repeating everything he heard his manager say without knowing what the things he was saying actually meant. He looked at my old shoes and saw that the only real visible wear was on the heel, and not on either side, so under or over-pronation probably wasn't a problem (which is what I had previously surmised from my own cursory examination). He watched me on the treadmill for a little bit and said that I was just landing on my heels, like most people, and I just need a shoe with good cushioning in the heel.

He brought out 4 pairs. One rubbed me funny in one spot and seemed like it would give blisters there. One was too small and he didn't have a larger size. One felt okay. The last ones were a pair of Mizunos that felt a little more okay than the previous pair. They were cheaper also, so I bought them. They have some sort of plastic shock absorber/spring contraption in the heel that I would totally be showing off on the playground if I were still in elementary school. I also picked up a pair of clearance running pants for when the weather starts to get a little colder.

So, I think these shoes will work out okay, but I will most likely return to The Running Shop for when I need anything else. The only real advantage that Performance Footwear has is that they give a 15% discount to members of the Southern Arizona Roadrunners, whereas The Running Shop only gives 10%, but that's the price you pay for knowledge, I guess.

The other thing I did today was bid on a used Garmin Forerunner 205 on eBay. My Casio digital watch broke, so I don't have a watch with stopwatch on it right now, which makes it hard to time my runs. I've been just generally counting my paces, because I know that at a normal jogging pace, my left foot will hit the ground about 80 times in a minute. So, if I have to run three minutes, I'll just count to 240. i'd much rather have a watch do it, and this watch can do things like beep when I've gone a certain time or distance in all sorts of intervals that I can program into it.

This week's exercise is actually the first week of a ten week running schedule that I got off of runnersworld.com. It was part of an article about how to get a complete out of shape non-runner to be able to run thirty minutes at a stretch. I used last week to just stretch my legs and get used to running a little, so I'm starting this schedule a week behind. That means I'll only be able to finish 7 weeks of it before the official end of my eight week experiment, which will take me up to the point where I can run 26 minutes, broken into three chunks with a few minutes of walking in between. I suspect I'll keep going after the experiment is over and finish out the schedule before seeing what comes next. I'm just not promising anything beyond my eight week goal at this point.

I'm still keeping up with the running okay. I added a couple of extra minutes in Friday and Saturday's run to hopefully be better prepared for the jump to next week.