The Running Man

[macdobhran]

Okay, so I’m not so much a “running” man as I am a walk-stumble-rest man, but I’m working on it. Last week I started the Couch-to-5k program. I did two out of the three days and I skipped Monday this week (TheWife got really sick on Monday so all our plans got canceled) which means I haven’t run since last Wednesday. And that’s okay because I did manage to make it to the gym three times in the last week.

I'll be running today though and I'm pretty excited about it. No, it’s not because of the 90+ degree temperatures or the soul-crushing humidity. I’m excited to run because I finally got decent shoes! I just want to put them on and twirl about the room like Cinderella!

Sorry, forget that last bit, that might have been over-sharing.

I’ve always gotten cheap tennis shoes/sneakers/whatever because I’ve never really been into sports and let’s face it, my gym attendance record is spottier than a leopard with measles. I never even went for the Jordan’s or Chucks or whatever was supposedly cool.  I figured if they covered my feet without cutting off the circulation they were good enough, right? So why pay $100 when a $20 pair from Wal-Mart will do the same thing?

Oh, how wrong I was. Yesterday I went to Potomac River Running in the Reston Towne Center. They were very helpful, encouraging, and non-judgmental, which as a sweaty, fat man I appreciated. The first thing they did was have me walk on a treadmill so they could observe my gait. I already know that I pronate my feet when I walk but according to PRR it’s not as bad as I originally thought. After the treadmill they took me over to a foot scanner that showed where pressure was on my soles while standing naturally. That showed up as pretty normal in that my weight is pretty evenly distributed between my heels and the balls of my feet. It did however show that I tend to put more weight on my right leg, which I’ve always suspected because I think one leg is slightly shorter than the other. Wow, this is turning into an episode of True Confessions.

Anyway, I tried on about 5 pairs of shoes until we finally narrowed it down to a pair of Brooks Adrenalines. They are about 8 lbs lighter than the cheap Wal-Mart shoes I have. Just putting them on made me feel like I could run around the block!

I’ll let you know tomorrow how it went but for now, let’s just keep my physical abnormalities and unfortunate dance tendencies on the down low, mkay?

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Comments

[macdobhran.livejournal.com]

What couch-to-5k podcasts do you have? I found one but I can't think of the name right now.

Another good podcast to listen to is Two Gomers Run a Half Marathon and Two Gomers Run a Marathon. They're both on iTunes. It's just two regular guys (high school friends) who decided to run a half marathon a couple years ago and podcast about the experience.