Wednesday: 5K, 35:13
Saturday: 5.5 miles, 1:15:29
My run this week to last week is like Barak Obama’s speech to Bill Clinton’s at the convention. If we say last week’s run was stellar, this week’s is definitely lackluster. I couldn’t wake up until almost 7am this morning because of an all-nighter I pulled Friday night working on my presentation. What’s more, my toe has been hurting since last Sunday. I need a new pair of running shoes. The current running shoes are a birthday present from 5 or 6 years ago. They have never fit me very well. Funny that it’s a catch 22 now. I had planned to reward myself with a pair of running shoes if I finish the half-marathon race next month. But now it has reached the point that I would have to get a pair of running shoes to continue the training. I will make them a reward for finishing my presentation then. Or, even better, I could try barefoot running. I remember there is a Fresh Air interview on running barefoot. But it doesn’t sound like a viable alternative for me at the moment.
Here is part of that story:
After hearing a lot about barefoot running, New York Times Phys Ed columnist Gretchen Reynolds decided to try it out for herself. An amateur runner for several decades, Reynolds says she thought the transition would be easy. But almost immediately, she got injured.
"I hurt my illiotibial band on the outside of the knee, and I also hurt my Achilles tendon, which I had never done before," she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "A lot of people are trying barefoot running without preparation and without the knowledge of what happens when you take off your running shoes, and I was one [of them]. And what often happens is exactly what happened to me, which is that you almost immediately hurt your Achilles tendon."
That's because many people ramp up their barefoot running programs too quickly, which doesn't allow the muscles in the legs and feet time to catch up, she says.
"Every muscle in your leg, every tendon, every ligament is used to how you land with shoes on," says Reynolds. "If you've been doing that for 40 years, which many of us have ... then your body is very used to that movement to how you hit the ground with shoes on. ... You take off your shoes, and even if in theory it's healthier, you're not used to it."
