if the shoe fits...run 900 miles in it.

i'm not going to lie. last october i went to my nearest DSW and bought this pair of asics GT-2110's because 1) they looked cool. 2) they fit my foot. and 3) they were in the right price range. i had no intentions of ever running any sort of race in them, let alone a marathon. i simply wanted a good pair of shoes that i 'might' do some running in.

a month later i signed up to run the full flying pig marathon and began my training end of november.

as some of you may or may not know, picking up a pair of running shoes because they look 'cool' is a terrible idea. i heard horror story after horror story of injured runners, leading back to a bad pair of shoes. i sank low in my seat when they told us that at team in training...promising myself that if i felt any pain that might be from my shoe, i will throw them away and get fitted for a real pair of shoes.

just for the record:
from a rough calculation, i have logged about 900 long, trying, sweaty miles onto this pair of asics. and oh....they have been so good to me the past 900 miles. they have seen plenty of sunshine, rain, mud, sleet, snow, ice, mud, gravel, and more rain, and more mud!!

after running a daunting 6 miles on tuesday, i told brooke i'm not going to run another mile until i get a new pair of shoes. so today i went to my local running store to finally get fitted for a pair of running shoes. the guy examined my shoe's wear patterns, watched me walk/run and brought out the newer version of the same shoe i picked up at DSW last year!! it's the Asics GT-2120's. he said it's the perfect fit for my type of foot. wow. what are the odds.

i took my new kicks out for a light 3 mile run today along the cedar river trail. it's a spot that brooke and i regularly frequent throughout the week....me on my run, and us on our bikes. it's a beautiful trail, where, if taken north for a mile, dead ends into lake washington (pictures to come) and if taken southeast, will run you out along the cedar river, through the ferns and moss of the rainforest. it's a beautiful trail, the perfect place to run.

i showed brooke my new shoes when he got home from work. he said, 'cool! they're very....blue. soon, they'll be very....gray.'
what can i say, i like to run in the mud.

well, now that i have my new shoes, maybe i'll have to check out the 'run like hell' half-marathon in portland this october.



doctor's warning:
if you're going to do any sort of serious training on a shoe...get it professionally fitted. it's free, and for you cincinnatians, i would highly suggest Fleet Feet Sports in blue ash. for any of our new seattlite friends who might be reading, i had a great experience at The Foot Zone in Issaquah.