Heading out for my last long run before my half marathon! The 2 week countdown begins. Planning to run out for an hour, and then back, and see how many miles that gets me! Should be 10-11.
out for a run
The Improvement Menu – Not Checklist
The more I read about running, the more I’m inundated with things I “should” be doing in order to run faster, reduce risk of injury, increase endurance, etc.
I feel like I should stretch more, warm up better, do interval workouts, hill repeats, tempo runs, aerobic cross training, strength training, you name it. Sometimes it’s overwhelming to realize the vast quantity of things out there that I could be doing to become a faster, stronger runner that I’m not doing. Especially when I consider some of these things might help keep me injury free. I’ve been lucky enough never to have a running injury, and running has become such an important part of my life that injury avoidance is really important to me. It would be awful to lose my favorite stress reliever and be forced to take a break from running!
Recently I was reading a book review on Mile-Posts of The Official Rock N Roll Guide to Marathon & Half-Marathon Training. In her review, Dorothy Beal mentioned that the book reminded her that she should be incorporating form drills and dynamic stretching. Dorothy Beal, if you haven’t heard of her, has run 24 marathons and been on the cover of Women’s Running magazine. And she’s STILL finding things that she should be doing or changing in her efforts to be a better runner.
That’s when it hit me – I should not be stressing out over all of these things faster runners are doing to become fast. I should not be sitting down and building the perfect weekly workout with strength training and cross training and dynamic stretching and hill repeats. That’s too much, too soon. I shouldn’t look at all this information out there as a checklist of what I must do to become a better runner. I should look at it as a menu, for all the available options out there that could help me get faster, run longer, and stay injury free. And I should pick one menu item at a time to work on, and once it’s comfortably incorporated, maybe pick something else to add.
The nice thing about running is that every bit helps. The more you put in, the more you get back, it’s not an all or nothing. Just because I don’t do an interval run or a hill repeat every week doesn’t mean my body won’t benefit from doing one this week.
To become a lifelong runner, I’ve got to pick what’s manageable and balance it with my regular life. It’s more fun to tackle one new training strategy at a time. I found it too much to keep increasing my long runs for half marathon training as well as doing intervals and hills… so I stopped, and just stuck to increasing my long runs. Still haven’t been injured. I’m not running faster, but I’m running a lot farther, and I’m excited to work on speed next.
I can’t do it all… no one can do it all. But the great news is, if you’re looking for ways to improve as a runner, there’s a lot of choices to pick from!
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My new running shoes: Nike Free 3.0
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| The Nike 3.0 |
It all started on our vacation. Greg was reading Born to Run and kept sharing the best bits with me. Born to Run is about a tribe of barefoot / sandal clad runners in Mexico who eat chia seeds and run insanely long distances. I didn’t read it myself, but the sections that Greg read out loud to me made some pretty compelling arguments for the benefits of barefoot running. I always thought barefoot running was for crazy people. Similar to the crazy people who make arguments like “but that’s how we raised children for thousands of years!” ignoring the fact that there used to be only a 50% chance of making it to your teenage years alive. (I’m pro vaccination, antibiotics, and sunscreen… thanks.)
My mom grew up in the sixties, runs around outside barefoot all summer, and wears those separated webby-toed shoes for boating enthusiasts to the grocery store year round. I think she only wears socks because she can knit them herself and she likes that. She’d be a good candidate for barefoot running. Me? I don’t wear shoes outside in the summer because I’m lazy, not because I’m fundamentally pro barefoot, or anti shoe, or anything else. I’m just flat out lazy. I don’t like having to retrieve my flip flops from near the garage door if I’m going out the front door. (Yet I’ll get up at 5 a.m. and run 12 miles… weird, right?)
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| My beautiful, happiest when barefoot mother. |
Anyway – suffice to say, very compelling arguments were made, including quotations from expert running coaches and podiatrists (that’s a foot doctor, I didn’t know that until I was like 27) and cool anecdotal evidence of how awesome it is, like some guy who ran in the same pair of shoes for years and years and just kept switching which feet he wore them on and never got injured… I don’t know, lots of stuff. Pro barefoot running. Pro chia seeds.
I’m not about to run barefoot down paved roads, but I did notice something strange after I bought my last pair of shoes. I’d been fitted by a specialist at Marathon Sports, and deemed a neutral runner. They got me a pair of very supportive, cushy shoes. I wore them, and ran in them, and it was fine. Then I ended up going to a sporting goods store looking for a pair of shoes to wear just to the gym for strength training (which I never did because I’m lazy). You know, “I don’t want to drop a dumbbell on my feet but I’m not running” sneakers. I picked up a pair of Brooks Pure Cadence. They’re lighter weight with only a 4.0 offset, which is flatter than my original Nike Fly-Knits as they were 5.0 (shoes are ranked by “offset” which is the MM difference between the heal and toe). I wore them once running because I was too lazy to go upstairs and get my old running shoes from near the treadmill. (I am so, so lazy.)
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| You can see my Brooks Pure Cadence 2’s at the bottom of this shot |
I loved them. They were light, I felt faster, I WAS faster (ok not much, but a little, probably because I was enjoying myself ever so slightly more). I felt more connected to the road. I stopped wearing my other shoes, feeling like a ridiculous and foolhardy rebel for running in shoes that hadn’t been professionally recommended to me. (I’ve since realized that as a neutral runner with a low BMI, I have a lot of shoe options and it’s not SUCH a big deal.)
Fast forward. My shoes now have quite a few miles on them and I wasn’t even fitted for them, and I’ve got a bunch of races lined up for fall and could probably use a pair of new shoes.
Greg had me hooked on the idea of the Nike Freefly Knit, the newest, latest, greatest (until later this fall) Nike shoe in their barefoot running inspired line. I went to Marathon Sports and tried a pair. LOVED them. Brought them home. Tried them on to show them to Greg, but five minutes in, my foot started to feel numb. They were WAY too tight. The flyknit technology was squishing my ankle and top of my foot, despite the shoe being my normal running size and the sole fitting perfectly.
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| love the idea of a shoe that feels like a second skin… but it was way too tight for me. |
I had to bring them back. I tried on the men’s in case they were wider. Nope. I tried on a larger size. Nope. I was devastated. Until an awesome sales associate at Marathon Sports suggested that I try the Nike Free 3.0. Same sole technology, even less cushioning, their “most minimal barefoot feel” according to Nike.com. Still has a snug fit, but is more forgiving than the flyknit. Ummm, perfect. Thank you. Not sure why I didn’t think of it, except that I had it in my head that the flyknit was newer and better and awesomer. (The freeflyknit was also more expensive, I walked out of Marathon sports with a t-shirt, hat, and some Gu packets and still had a 37 cent credit back to my account from exchanging my shoes!)
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| My new Nike Free 3.0s |
The first pair of Nike Free 3.0 I tried on creased in the toebox when I ran, but sizing down a half size from 9 to 8.5 (my street shoe size is 8) worked perfectly. Roomy in the toe still, but snug enough to feel like a second skin.
I’m going to ease into them carefully, but I’ve got a real good feeling about this.
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| Goodbye, old running shoes. You’re not even in the rotation anymore! |
Note: This isn’t a review, so much as an anecdote about my own shoe buying experience. I don’t receive any sponsorships or free gear from anyone* (except my husband, he buys me lots of awesome running stuff) and my hope for you is not that you will buy the same shoes as me, but that you will also find the best shoes for you 🙂
*anyone looking to offer me free gear please contact me 😉
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Thanks for your comments!
I was looking at my stats recently, and I realized that for a blog that started only two and a half months ago, I’ve gotten a pretty decent following! Even before my interview was featured on Mile-Posts I had hundreds of readers each day. I remember joking to my husband when I first started this that I was just going to run really slow and then blog about it! Turns out, that’s not such a bad idea.
What started as a creative outlet for me has turned into something a little bigger, thanks to my readers. It’s now a place where people occasionally chat with each other in the comments section, send me questions that become full blown blog posts, and get me thinking about running in new ways by sharing their own experiences.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the comments I’ve gotten on posts, the e-mails I’ve gotten with questions, or people saying they like reading and they’ll be wishing me luck on my half marathon in September.
It’s awesome. I love writing about running. Every time I go for a run, it seems that these posts are writing themselves. Taking time when the kids are napping or in bed to write and reflect is one of my favorite things to do. But I’m also a mother trying to balance a running life with a parenting life, and I’m not sure I’d keep posting on days when time is tighter than usual if I didn’t know I had people reading. Which would be a real shame, because I love writing! I always feel better if I take that time for myself.
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| It’s amazing… but it’s a lot to handle! Writing is a much needed respite. |
I started college planning to major in creative writing. Poetry had me switching my major pretty quickly. Poetry is actually MATH disguised as a form of writing, and engineers make better poets than I do. In fact, my two year old is arguably a better poet. (Other little identity lessons from college include: I do not look good as a bleached blonde, I am not a good ballet dancer, and I am more New England than Georgia.)
Today, I am a runner, not a dancer. I’ve learned to stick with my natural hair color, and I’m back in New England where I can watch the leaves change each fall and walk outside without being vaporized in the summer. I’m writing, just not the novels I expected. Thanks to all of you who read and comment, I think it’s actually better. It’s definitely more fun.
Thanks for reading, sharing, commenting and e-mailing. Please, introduce yourself to other readers in the comments! Ask questions, brag about your most recent run, vent about the hill near your house. I love all of it. Keep it coming 🙂
In return, here’s what I can promise you:
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Great run with my sister!
Had a great run with my sister while I was in Maine on vacation! She has been running off and on due to some knee concerns, and I had done a long run and donated blood two days earlier, so we were both in the mood to take it easy and chat.
It was so nice to run with my sister on a cool Maine morning while the kids had a special breakfast out with their grandparents! Makes me wish we all lived closer together. (My sister lives in CT, and I live in MA, and the rest of our family is all in Maine.)
Took a quick picture of us out for our run… I’m not loving how I look in my men’s under armor hat! The top is oddly weird and shapeless, the brim is too widely floppy… yuck.
So I picked up a new one today at Marathon Sports along with a new pair of sneakers… that I am SUPER excited about. (The shoes, not the hat… the hat is fine, but I am excited about the shoes. More on that another day 🙂
In the meantime, just remembering back to that cool brisk air, being with my sister, and a leisurely run. It was the type of relaxed running that I dreamed of when I took up running in the first place. I remember huffing and puffing on a 5 minute running increment of Couch to 5k and seeing these gorgeous, willowy women running down the brook path chatting with each other. I was so envious.
Except now I’m not… because that’s us.
Speaking of us, let’s just share a trend here:
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| K: awkwardly large sunglasses. E looks great |
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| K: pregnant and large in the face, huge hat. E looks great |
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| K: heading out in the rain like it’s the apocalypse. E looks great |
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| K: funny white head thing. E looks great 😉 |