New Shoes

I’ve got shoes on the brain. One of the (many) thoughts running (ha!) through my head as I started struggle in Nashville was, “I should have bought new shoes. Newer shoes would feel so much better right about now.” This thought popped in to my head somewhere around mile 15 or so; I wasn’t quite struggling but in hind sight this was probably not a good sign and foreshadows what was to come.

“They,” whoever it is “they” are, say running shoes need to be replaced every 400 to 500 miles and that you should have relatively few miles on the shoes used on race day. I have been using a different rule of thumb than 400-500 miles and rotating a pair of shoes out when my leg (foot, knee, hip) starts to act up while I’m running. This was going well and I had been alternating two pairs – Saucony Omni 8s (blue) with over 700 miles and Nike Zoom+ Stuctures with nearly 500 miles. The Nikes still felt good on all my long runs so I decided to save the money and race in them.

Bad call, as it turns out. One of many dubious decisions I made going in to Nashville.

One of the deals I made with myself when I was trying to decide whether I should use attempt another marathon so soon after Nashville was that if I ran it, I would do so in new shoes. And so, on the day I signed up for the Bob Pott’s Trail Marathon in York, PA I also ordered a new pair of shoes. The winners: Saucony Omni 8s, this time in red.

The Omnis are the first real running shoe I ever wore (they were on Omni 5 at the time) and they are my tried-and-true shoe. I’ve dabbled with other brands but I’ve come back to Saucony Omni’s ever time. The Mizunos were good and so were the Nikes. Pearl Izumi wasn’t terrible but over time I didn’t like the fit and as much as I wanted to love the Brooks, they hurt my feet right out of the box. (Mizuno is probably the only brand I’d give another shot to at this point but I may also take another look at Nike).

They arrived on my doorstep yesterday. Yay!

I put them on for a little test-run this morning – 3 miles, slow and steady at recovery pace. Running in new shoes can be very motivating. It was probably not the best idea to wear them on a recovery run because once I started running I wanted to go faster and farther than planned to see how they felt. I restrained myself.

I proceeded to think about the shoes for the next 30 minutes. Their feel – these are tighter than the Nike’s I’ve been wearing, that feels weird. Their size – they are half size smaller than the Nike’s. I’ve been in size 8s since I started running (normal shoe size is 7 – your feet grow when you run, did you know that?) but the salesperson at the local running store put me in the 8.5s for Nikes because Nike sizing runs small. I never felt like the Nikes fit my foot that well (huge toebox, which is good but my heal would slip on uphill climbs).

Maybe I should have gotten an 8.5 for these as well, I thought. Wow, a sizing and a half just from running!

Regardless, hip-hip-hooray for new running shoes.

Daily Dozen:
3 miles @ recovery pace
Strength training exercises – calves & bum