Exchanging the shoes….

November 7, 2013

Yup that's right it's time to exchange those sneakers.  So after Sunday's run I went back to the really dead old running shoes to see if I was still having pain.  And no pain with the old sneakers which confirms my concern…it was the new shoes.
I truly understand the recommendation of a less structured sneaker, however I also have always been told don't make a major change (unless you are having issues due to your current pair) when you are increasing mileage.  You either increase mileage or make a major change to your form or sneakers etc - never both.
So back to the store I went.  The shoe expert I dealt with this time was wonderful and agreed with me the sneaker was too big of a change.  In fact the new pair was NOTHING like my old pair and was probably way too big of a change combined with increasing mileage.  Of course they no longer make my sneaker but we came out with something that is considered similar.  Hopefully this will work.

Growing Pains or Something to Worry about?

Sunday November 3, 2013

Today wasn’t a great run, in fact overall it was pretty awful.  I had to spend most of my run paying very close attention to my body trying to figure out what is going on.  Starting by mile 3 my entire right leg was cramping up.  It started in the hip and gradually the entire leg had cramped.  Of course at this point I was 3 miles from home and still had 6.5 miles to go in my run.  I did my best to stretch out at mile 3  and made my way home, managing to stay on pace.  But now came decision time – to scrap the run or keep going?  This is never an easy decision to make and you have to look at so many possibilities.  If this was the start of an injury would I be better off cutting the run short and hopefully preventing a full injury?  But what about not getting the mileage in?  How do I determine if this is an injury versus growing pains?  I mean after all there is going to be discomfort with an increase in mileage. When I got to the house to switch out my water bottle at mile 6 I decided to take time to stretch that leg out.  After 10 minutes of stretching the pain was mostly gone and I felt ready to run again.  I decided to go out and try to finish my run but if I started to hurt at all I would turn around and go home.  The run ended up going much better than expected and I think I found the culprit of my pain – my new running shoes L Time to figure that out…