Running down a dream

so for some strange reason i have started running. Now i had ran a little last year, but at best i only managed once a week. This winter, since snowboarding was nearly a wash, i started running on a treadmill. Now my personal opinion on treadmills and stationary bikes are that they are like masturbation; it gets the job done but its not nearly as much fun as the real thing. Now i had thought i was doing pretty good with the treadmill thing. I was running twice a week and according to the little readout i was running like 3 miles. Though now i realize that 3 miles on a treadmill has nothing to do with 3 miles in reality.

My 'friend' Noah (aka Running Nazi) suggested that we should start running after work on the airport loop (he did suggest this back when it was cooler then it is right now). So twice a week we started running after work (aka the death march). I quickly noticed my body thought this was a bad idea, i mean a very bad idea!!!! I would make it about 1.5 miles and my legs would knot up into a painful ball of objection. Of course this was nothing to the shin splints i started getting a couple weeks later. If you are familiar with these then you know what i am talking about. If you haven't then you don't run.

Slowly over the next month or so, the running became easier and the legs stop hurting as much, that was until the heat of summer kicked in. One day after work i was so over heated that i nearly collapsed on the trail. Both Running Nazi and I agreed the running needs to switch to a morning running routine. But because neither of us liked the idea of using the company provided showers, this forced me to run by myself near my apartment. so now i find myself waking up early just to go run around my area for no good reason then it has become habit. and i am a creature of habit.

So twice a week was becoming to easy to run my ~3.5 miles i bumped it up to three times a week (it also helped i was getting harassed by the running nazi) and i noticed something interesting. and by interesting i mean something that hurt a lot. My leg started hurting just below the knee on the shin. This seemed strange since there is no muscle there to speak of. it actually felt like the bone itself was hurting and it was getting worst. Now i am known to ignore pain to keep doing the silly things i do, but hurting badly for an entire day made me wonder if i should really do something about that.

My first thought was to look at my wore out running shoes. They are not that bad and they probably still have several more miles left in them. But i go to the shoe anyway. although i dont go to any shoe store, i go to a running shoe store, now the store is not running, that would be interesting. no this was a store that specialize in running shoes and running clothes. Which concerned me a little bring these places tend to mark up prices because well they can. After some fancy measurements they found that the shoes i had been using were completely wrong for my feet. And suggested some actually very comfortable shoes, comfortable and costly shoes.

No matter what sport you play if you have to buy specialty shoes you are going to pay somewhere around $100-$150 no matter how much shoe is actually there. this doesn't make sense to me. should shoes cost by weight or something, if there is 1/10 the shoe shouldn't it cost 1/10 the amount. So i tried out the new shoes this morning, and well its shocking the difference properly fitting shoes can do for a run. i have a little muscle soreness (which is expected) but no major leg soreness like last sunday. I still think i paid too much for shoes, but it was still money well spent. oh well, guess i'll have to keep this up for a while longer.