Buy new shoes - done!

I took off of work on Friday. It had been a busy past couple months, so I was ready for a long weekend. During the day I toured a few potential apartments--sadly my top choice had already been taken. Now I've learned not to fall in love with an apartment based just on my imagination of how great it looks. The good news, though, is that after looking at a few others, I found a new apartment! I'm signing the lease later this week. It feels good just to know that I have a place to live...my current lease doesn't end until the summer, but I'm a planner.

Also on Friday, I visited Fleet Feet on the westside of Madison. I checked out a few different running store websites and this one sounded like the best for how they fit the shoes. And I was definitely impressed. When I got there, the saleswoman (fit specialist?) sat down and talked to me about the distances I'm running and I told her about my plans for the Madison half-marathon.

Then, she had me roll up my pants a bit and walk barefooted across the floor so she could see my natural pronation. Then she measured my feet and arches while sitting and standing--to see how it changed when my feet were bearing weight. I already knew that I had high arches and would need a good shoe for support and I have a pretty neutral stride, so I didn't need a lot of additional correction.

She brought out three pairs of shoes--a Nike, Mizuno and Asics. I tried on all three pairs and she watched as I ran on the treadmill in them. The Nikes were super comfy, but I ended up choosing the Mizuno Wave Inspire. Also, one new thing I learned--for running shoes, it's best to buy a shoe that is a full size bigger than your normal shoes. This way, your toes have room to move and--big bonus--no black toenails, or worse, losing your toenails.

I had had big plans to run in my new shoes right away on Friday, but last week was not so good for running. I finally got back to running yesterday. The three mile run went pretty well actually. Knee pain--gone. A little bit of pain crept in towards the end, but I'm going to assume that it was caused by not running for a week. Also, I could feel the shoes trying to make my stride straighter, rather than running more from the inside of my foot in.

I've got another 3 mile run tomorrow so hopefully they continue their knee magic!

~eca.