nice shoes, shame about the legs

I had a strange experience, just after I penned yesterday’s missive. I was waiting for the lift when I noticed a woman – a stranger – staring fixidly at my feet. Most people with functioning noses pretty quickly figure out my feet are best avoided, but this lady seemed quite captivated. I should add, I was wearing shoes – my Brooks Racers. As you can see, they’re fairly spectacular, especially in a grey corporate setting:

When we got into the lift, she actually went as far as to compliment my shoes. “Nice shoes” she said. “Thanks,” I said “they’re running shoes”. (Well, they are!).

And that was more or less that, aside from about 26 floors worth of awkward silence.

That’s a first – me being complimented on my footwear.

Physio
I went to the physio this morning, to have my knee checked out. The physio turned out to be a young woman (although, when I think about it, she was probably a woman all along) and nice and seemingly competent. She asked me a bunch of questions, looked at my shoes, and then twisted and turned my legs in ways that varied from “excruciating” to “get the f**k off me you sadistic woman”.

Then she told me my knee had several “structural issues” and that I could run the marathon in October if I wanted too, but in a disapproving tone of voice. “I can’t stop you running the marathon, but you need to have a think about your priorities” or words to that affect. I get the feeling she sees a wooden right leg in the near future for me.

That may be so, but it’s a price worth paying, surely.

A massage followed, but not one of those relaxing, essential oil massages, a claws of steel-type one.

Immediately afterwards, I jumped off the massage table, then pretended my right leg collapsed underneath me. I thought it was funny, in a Dad-joke kinda way, but I did see a definite note of panic in her eyes for just a second.

Now the knee hurts like buggery. I’m supposed to run as normal, but stretch 4 times a day for the next week. If that, combined with today’s claws of steel doesn’t do the trick, then there may be an xray and/or MRI to come.

chucking out dead shoes

There’s a definite life cycle when it comes to running shoes, at least for me.

It goes something like this:

1. Shoe comes out in the US – becomes object of lust, possibly unattainable
2. Shoe comes out in Australia – I begin to haunt Rebel Sports
3. I come into money, or the old shoes fall apart – they are mine!
4. Too nice to take out of the box
5. First few runs – avoid taking them anywhere there might be water, mud, dust or muggers: in short, anywhere
6. Preferred option – run in them whenever I can
7. Dependable – the default shoe
8. A little tired, but still good
9. Very comfortable, but seen better days
10. First foot pain on long run – ignore it
11. More foot pain – can’t ignore
12. Move to cupboard – use for short runs
13. Move to other cupboard – for messing around the house

I can get that far pretty well, but there’s one last step I can’t take, namely:

• Put it in the bin

The affect of all that is I end up with cupboards full of old running shoes, lending a peculiar “fragrance” to the house.

There have been complaints.

So, last weekend I bit the bullet and chucked a few out. I now own:

1. 2 pairs of actively used Brooks Adrenalines – 1 for home and one for work
2. 1 pair of Brooks Racers
3. 1 pair of Brooks Adrenalines for messing around the house

And that’s it! I had to be cruel and lose, by my calculations, something around 5,000km worth of shoes.

Running
A 14.1km run this lunch-time in the cold. It felt good, like I was running well and fast. Not particularly quick though. 1 hour 5 minutes.

racer

The early-stages of marathon training are pretty good so far. I ran 80km this week, including 29km this morning. The run was fine, at a steady easy pace and I upped the pace over the last 3km. 29km in 2 hours 15.

That’s fine. No pressure. I kinda followed my nose a bit, and ended up running down Mountain Highway for long periods of time, instead of the usual trek up and down the Dandenong Creek Trail. I’d like to be doing these sorts of runs a bit fast in a month or two, when my fitness picks up a bit.

Shoes
This afternoon I happened to be in Smith street, in Collingwood, AKA cheap running shoes-town. Nike was a heaving mass of humanity – not much fun with little kids in tow. Brooks was far more civilised. Also, they had a pair of Racers going cheap in my size.

They’re not the most recent model, but I’m quite happy to be behind the fashions in these things. With any luck I can do a fast 10km or two. I’m thinking about running a marathon in them, but not quite convinced. Here’s a picture of them.

As Steve would say, that’s all.

shorts

Occasionally I have a good run of results, running-wise, perhaps a PB here or there or just a good couple of training sessions. It doesn’t take much before I’m going about calling myself a marathon runner, puffing my chest up with pride, looking down on mere “joggers” and generally making an arse of myself.

If there’s one thing guaranteed to puncture this illusion like a thumb-tack applied to a balloon, it’s a trip to the friendly local sportsware supplier. Particularly when it involves shorts.

Whoever it is who designs these things obviously doesn’t take into account persons of my particular dimensions.

I don’t ask much. I don’t demand “flattering” or “fashionable”, I just want to be able to run in reasonable comfort without causing members of the public to avert their eyes in horror and small children to run crying to their mothers.

It’s very distressing.

This is why I run in the same pair of shorts for literally years on end. My current favourites have been with me since 2005 and have done, at a reasonable calculation, somewhere over 5000km. They were once black and only had the regulation number of holes. Now they’re a sort of turgid brown, like the back end of a particularly filthy truck on the Western Ring Road and they have ratty holes in awful places.

S, I’ve been looking for some to replace the incumbents. For a while I thought a pair of Brooks shorts would do the job, but they fell at the first hurdle: splitting embarrassingly up the side.

Yesterday, I found it. The perfect pair! (you guessed it, the same type as my current pair). And only $23 on special. So I’m happy.

Running
After a few days off, doing an impression of Jabba the Hut and morbidly contemplating the state of my shorts, I hit the road today, looking to make up for lost time.

Having waited for the rain to stop, I set out, only to discover the rain hadn’t stopped at all. It had just taken a breather, prior to dumping a deluge on my head.

I did shelter for a minute beneath a Croydon shopfront, but by that time the damage had been done. Reasoning that I couldn’t get any wetter, I pushed on my way. 22km, including two loops of the Croydon Golf Course. It’s quite a nice place to run, I can’t believe I’ve not been there before.

When I finally made it home I looked like a drowned, muddy rat and felt like it too. On the plus side, my shoes will come in handy later in the summer if we need some water to fill the dams.

the pointy end

Three sleeps to go until the big race; yes I’m getting down to the pointy end now. I’m feeling strangely calm, almost serene, about the whole thing. Yes, I know it’s a long run, but hey, that’s for Sunday morning. It’ll sort itself out then.

I’ve done all the training I can possibly do, far more than ever before and at a higher quality. According to my online training log, I’ve done 5k more than I need to.

Morale boosting
As you might expect, there’s very little running scheduled for this week. What there is seems to be of the “run to stop myself going completely spare” type; a 4k run the day before the race is hardly going to do me much good.

Last night was supposed to be 9k easy. It worked out slightly longer, and probably slightly faster than ideal – 10k in 45 minutes, including hills. Not to worry, the morale-boosting was worth it. A very easy, fluent run. Not at all stressed or hard work. Nice long comfortable strides and a manageable heart-rate.

On the spur of the moment, I tacked on a steep-ish hill at the end of the run, always a sign I’m feeling in good form.

Shoes
I’ve made a decision on the whole shoes dilemma I alluded to recently. The new GTS7s have got the nod: the old faithful GTS6s have been relegated to the interchange bench. This is based on a couple of positive runs in the 7s over the past few days, and the weather forecast, which is supposed to be fine.

Pacing
As mentioned a little while ago, I do have a target time in mind for the race, but as they say in James Ellroy books, I’m keeping it on the down-low. What I have done is print out a race-pace-band from Runner’s World UK.

The target time is right in the middle of where I feel I should be. In an ideal world I might go faster; if I go a little slower I won’t be too unhappy. I’m not going to get too worked up about it though – it’s mainly just to make sure I don’t start out too fast.

feverish anticipation

There’s rather a lot to talk about today in Jruns land; I may need to split this all up into two posts.

Yes, gosh-darn-it, I will. This post is about running and/or marathon stuff. The later one is about more general things.

Running
I’m well and truly into tapering-mode now. Only 6 days to go. Last weekend was very easy – 9ks on saturday, including 6 strides. Sunday was 16k taken reasonably easy. It was all done-and-dusted in under 75 minutes, as per instructions.

To come this week – a couple of 40-45 minute runs and a fairly pointless 4k run on saturday.

Shoes
The last few nights have been spent tossing and turning, running over and over in my head all the combinations and ramifications of shoes and socks for the big day.

Should I wear the old tried and true Adrenaline GTS6? They’ve had a lot of wear now, but they’re still in reasonable nick, and are very suited to my feet. I’ve done all but one of my long runs in these, which means I’m confident in them, but I also know they’ve had well over 1000ks.
On the other hand, I have a new pair of Adrenaline GTS7 which are in very good condition. I’ve done about 200ks in them, including a long run of 28k a few weeks ago.

So should I stick with the old faithfuls, or go with the up-and-comers? It’s a dilemma.

Course
I trooped out to Williamstown on Saturday to have a look at the course. As expected it’s fairly boring, but dead flat. So it’ll be a matter of keeping motivated, especially towards the later stages of the race. The only thing that may be an obstacle is strong wind, as it’s mostly pretty exposed; which brings me to…

Weather
A day like today (for non-Melbournites that’s windy and dark) would be terrible. I don’t want wind. At the moment, the long-range weather says Fine, 11 to 20. That’s fine, as far as it goes, I suppose.

If it rains, it’ll impact my choice of shoes. Who wants to get a brand new pair of shoes covered in mud? Not me, that’s for sure. Also socks; I have two favourite pairs, one with a bit more padding which can get heavy and icky when wet, and a new pair which is lighter and stands up better under rainy conditions.

More to come shortly…

new shoes

I’ve finally pushed the boat out and bought a new pair of runners. Hooray.

My cunning business brain noticed Amart allsports were selling Brooks Adrenaline GTS 7 for $10 cheaper than Rebel Sports. So I trooped into Rebel in QV on Tuesday arvo and walked out 10 minutes later with a new pair under my arms, taking advantage of RS’ 10% off competitor’s price thingy.

I felt pretty pleased with myself, as you might expect. In fact, I have a notion I may have actually said “Gotcha!!!!” to the sales girl in the shop. My gloating demeanour may have backfired slightly though. I don’t think she was too pleased. She flat-out refused to give me the red version, citing some extremely dubious fine-print.

Petty, I call it.

But there you go – a new pair of shoes. They’re damn ugly. Boring, blue, grey, white. Ho hum.
But they’re pretty comfortable; unlike most Brooks shoes I’ve run in, they actually have some sort of cushioning. Must be the “Mogo“, I guess.

I wonder who came up with that name? It’s one of the more dorky things I’ve ever heard.

Joke
Speaking of dorky things. How about this for a joke:

Q: At a monster party, who’s the best dancer?
A: The boogie monster

My god, I am so turning into my Dad. I might as well go the whole hog: buy a checked shirt and loafers and take up golf.

Running
18.something ks yesterday arvo in the new shoes. About 5min/k pace. Ho hum.

new shoes

Don’t get excited. I don’t actually have new shoes, but I am in the market for some.

It occurred to me yesterday that my old shoes have about 1300k on them. That’s probably about 500k too much. What’s 500k between friends you ask? Not much, I agree, but they’re Brooks Adrenalines which don’t have the best cushioning to start with. They’re now a little bit like running on little concrete slabs.

So, I took a bit of a walk around the city’s fine running emporia to see what the go is. I tried on a few pairs, and scoped things out.

Amusing comment overheard from a Rebel Sport salesman (“salesboy” really, he looked way young). “Oh, don’t worry, Brooks make the cushioning to outlast the shoes themselves”. Given my experience with my blue adrenalines GTS6, I admit to stifling a stealthy giggle.

No actual running today, rather a well-needed rest. As always, I feel slightly anxious not running. My problem – I need to learn to be less obsessive.