Adventures in running. Ep. 1

If you remember, I wrote that I plan to start running. Well, on Saturday the weather was great and I figured I might as well start now. So I did.

I didn’t buy new shoes, and I knew it would be a bad decision as I started my run/walk. But I wanted to do it to see how difficult my mission to 5k was going to be (this is my training plan).

I started with Day 1 – Week 1, “Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes.”

I downloaded an app to help track my progress. (If you’re looking for a great one check out RunDouble. I haven’t tried any others, so my review is severely biased.) I think the app is great, I can pick one of my playlists, and hit start. Then I just listen to what the lady tells me.

First I started off with my “brisk 5 min walk.” Then a voice comes over the Foo Fighters and says “start running now.” So I did. A then the women said, “Slow your pace to a brisk walk.” And I did that too. This continued for a while, and the woman said, “You are halfway done.” So I turned around and went back toward home and continued with my run/walk and a 5 min cool down walk.

After my run, I felt fine. Nothing hurt except my heels where my shoes apparently rubbed off all the skin. Aside from that, I was feeling good.

I woke up on Sunday and felt like I had been hit by a bus. Ok, it wasn’t that bad, but it was pretty awful. My legs were sore. Mostly my shins (the outside) and my knees were a little achey on and off throughout the day.

Of course I started searching the entire internet to find the cause of my sore shins (aside from my shoes, because that’s an obvious conclusion). Apparently when I run I hit the ground heel first, and thus causing my shin pain (to get an idea of the pain: just put your feet flat on the floor and leaving your heel on the floor, raise your toes as high as you can and wait for the burn now hold it for like a minute. Yeah…it’s unawesome.) Ok. So I need to stop that because I’ve always had this problem.

There’s all kinds of hippie crap about barefoot running and blah blah blah injury free blah blah blah, but I’m not running barefoot. So I skipped over all that nonsense.

Then I came to the pile of “midfoot” crap. Now, it’s not really crap. I did try a few running steps through my house to see the difference and it clearly doesn’t hurt my shins to land on my whole foot. So, that’s a bonus. But that’s also being mindful of every step (I took 5) and that’s clearly not something I’m going to do while running a mile or two. However, it does make sense to shorten my stride (it’s not very long to begin with) and lessen the impact on my heels.

Anyway, I plan to see if I can modify my running form to be less of a heel striker and more of a soft midfoot lander. I think it’s probably a good idea to start now before I get too far into this 5k training and have to adjust it again.

Of course I’ll let you guys know how it goes. Also, I’ll let you know when I buy new shoes, that will make a big difference.