I am running on Nikes again. If you asked me last year about Nikes, I would have said that they are the worst shoes on earth. I don't get all the fugly feet problems many runners get. I haven't had a blister in years. My days of losing toe nails ended long ago as well. Nikes caused more foot grossness than any other pair of sneakers I ever had in my entire life.
So when I was at the best running store in the whole wide world while I was home for my cousin's wedding, and the guy said "Why don't you try these?," I had no qualms saying "I don't think so. Me and Nikes aren't good friends." But he insisted. He said they have changed. In fact, he never ran on Nikes and now he is. He was cute, so I humored him. And. They felt good. Real good. I tried on Mizunos, Brooks, even the new version of my current Asics Nimbus, but these felt by far the best. I wanted to love any pair BUT the Nikes. But not even the Asics, in the cool purple and gray, could top the fugly Air Zoom Precept (mine are blue instead of green).As if I needed proof to how much better these shoes are working for me than the the Asics, I did a ten miler on Sunday in the Asics and I felt creaky. I came home and put and ice pack on both the top and bottom of both my knees and ace-bandaged it up and iced. Today, I did another ten miler in the Nikes. The schedule only said six, but my regular running buddies who are marathon training were running ten. During the peak of marathon training, six and ten miles became oddly interchangeable. I mean, it's only four more miles! So mentally I was set to do another ten miler. My body disagreed, but my knees? Nary a peep from the knees. They were very happy knees today. And all because of my shiny (literally) new Nikes. Although oddly, I ran Sunday at a 10:15 pace and today at a 10:35 pace. But I blame that on me not being in shape to run two ten milers with only a day in between.
So in response to Joe's post, there are machinations afoot to run
the Toronto Half-Marathon in October. As long as Lisa will be back in the country. I think Mark might be joining in the fun. And Teresa might make a guest appearance as well. So even though I shouldn't be running at all, I am now in half-marathon training mode. The one thing I don't like about races in Canada is their insistence on marking the course with kilometers. Silly Canadians.
I am contemplating defending my title as the fastest 20-29 year old woman at the Pufferbilly Days 5k (I won that sucker with an impressive 29:10 time - fear my speed). But I have been pretty slow these days, so I don't want to run a 5k unless I think I have a chance of PRing.
There is also the Capital Pursuit, which is a fun fast 10 miler (my average pace last year was 10:15 and I limped the entire second half). But I am slower now than I was last year at this time. I know it is stupid to not run a race because you will probably not go as fast as the last time, but what can I say? I am silly like that.
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I put this in the category of "related to running" because our lovely relay volunteer Caroline is the librarian in charge of one of the world's largest collections of Proust materials (and to think that she slept in my car and stood out in the rain for us!). I just saw "Little Miss Sunshine" and it was perhaps the best movie I have seen in a while. I laughed and laughed.
5 comments:
me, Canadian
my running coach, American
running coach tells me (doesn't know that i'm canadian) that i should switch from min/miles to min/Ks because in the Bolder Boulder 10K, you will get 10 time splits, instead of 6 and .1 time splits.
as i just spent a year learning min/miles instead of min/Ks, i hit him over the head with a water bottle.
NOW, he knows i'm Canadian.
Nikes? I never thought I'd see the day with you back in Nikes. At least you did it because of a cute guy, though, and not something silly and petty. ;)
Sheesh, those Canadians - always resorting to violence :-)
And man, Boulder just has to be different, doesn't it. The good old English system is not good enough apparently...
Somewhere here in California there absolutely has to be a 10k that calls splits every kilometer and I have to find it. Because it means all I have to do is run straight 3:30s for my goal, and every one second off that per km is obviously 10 seconds off the overall time. Nice easy numbers instead of "5:38-plus-pi-over-twelve-or-so-per-mile" and having to calculate for 30 seconds at each split (I had a friend in college that could do integration by parts in her head while drunk, but I can barely add while I'm running) to figure out whether you're on pace.
Or maybe I should just make my 10k goal based on some arbitrary even-sounding time per-mile instead of some arbitrary even-sounding finishing time.
Okay Al, I give kilometer markings that benefit. But I occupy myself doing the math in my head while I run. Although I need to write stuff down when I integrate by parts :-)
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