Not Running

We runners see lots of inspiration. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, even a simple search on Google Images will turn up a wide array of tips on getting out the door and fighting inertia.

It’s a battle I fight every day, as well. But today I’m up against something different. I’m telling myself not to run.

I did 5x800 Saturday and then rested Sunday as is my custom. After church Sunday I seem to have eaten some food that did not agree with me and I spent a couple days with a stomachache, then feeling that all-around soreness you feel when you’re on the back end of being sick. I prudently skipped my Monday run, knowing I wasn’t too far off of making my weekly and monthly goals.

Then Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:45 with a stomach that felt like it was bowling a perfect game. Made it a rough morning. I probably could’ve made it through a four-miler, but it’s everybody’s nightmare to be caught out there with no place to go. So I scratched today’s run as well.

Part of it is that while I love to run, I don’t want it to take up too much time in my life. I don’t want to become subservient to my running habits—I want to give myself permission to skip a day or two as the situation dictates.

The challenge here is that skipping Monday and Tuesday make it harder to meet my weekly (20) and monthly (95) mileage goals. So while I can be OK with skipping a few days due to illness, it seems I’m not fully able to let go of my weekly goal streak (24 weeks) or my monthly streak that sits at four.

I have to admit that the best thing out of all this was the sleep. I stayed home from work Monday and slept an extra three hours, which is better than staying home from school and watching game shows like Press Your Luck when I was a kid. Kind of felt like I was playing hooky from school.

It turns out running is easy. Not running is hard.

519

          So here in Georgia we had one last cold snap last week when low temps fell into the mid-20s. Balmy for some, pretty chilly for us.

  

         What it meant for me is that I got out my Smartwool socks for the first (any probably only) time this season. There’s a fair amount of yellow color to these socks and it showed through so that when I bent down to begin my prerun stretch I noticed something:

I managed to blow a hole in the forefoot of the right shoe.

          These were my Saucony Ride 3 shoes that I got in June of 2013 when we lived in Tuscaloosa. The wife and I went to one of the outdoorsy-type stores to get her some sandals, and I my eyes lit up when I found the Rides on sale for about $30 in a size 9. That is a deal you just can’t pass up.

            This was the end of an era when many shoes were larger and foamier, and as a result bulkier. The Ride 3 had EVA foam in the midsole and progrid cushioning. The Runner’s World write up shows them being pretty stiff and having a 15-millimeter heel-to-toe differential. That feels about right. Of course now their shoes have a drop of 8 mm, the shelf isn’t as high, and they’ve got the supersoft Everun foam in there so that you feel like you’ve got a pillow on each foot.

           

forefoot treads are pretty well done for

            My first run with the new kicks was on June 26, 2013 when I headed out for a sweaty seven-miler and did five miles at 8:15 pace. The last ride (see what I did there?) was a neighborhood four-miler on a cool January morning a few months ago. They got some desert work when I went to see my folks in El Paso last summer, giving me my first real taste of summer running in the southwest.

the sockliners are out, as I used Green Superfeet
inserts in these neutral shoes

            I ran in them for almost four years and 519 pain-free miles overall. Then they just start to come apart. Pffft. If you can’t judge a football recruiting class until three or four years down the road, maybe it’s OK to wait a similar length of time to review a shoe.     

            They did right by me. Great shoes. Seriously.

Hoka Arahi

One of the best things about working in a specialty running shop is that occasionally the shoe companies will float shoes to store employees as a way to help us articulate how awesome the shoes are to our customers.

I picked up a pair of Hoka One One Arahi seed shoes at the running store a few weeks back. I was pretty excited, since my current experience with the Hoka Infinite (their first actual stability model) is outstanding.

The word on the Arahis is largely positive—very lightweight and responsive. It’s a stability shoe, but a closer relative to say, the Brooks Ravenna than the Adrenaline. One difference is the Arahi has developed a new concept by providing stability through use of a “J-Frame,” wrapping the heel from the outside (lateral side) around the back and up to the midfoot on the medial side.

 

So I took off on my favorite five-mile time trial route in my brand new wheels. This route is sidewalk nearly the whole way with very little traffic coming out onto the busy morning road. It’s mostly downhill for the first half, but the fun ends when I turn uphill and into the theater parking lot. I do a brief circle around and then cover the same ground on the way back. I use it as a way to track my fitness level.

The first few miles were as uneventful as you’d ever want them to be. I always say the highest compliment you can give a pair of shoes is that you barely notice you’re wearing them. That’s what I felt for the first little bit, until I felt a burning sensation on the balls of both feet. I’d never felt that in any other pair of shoes and it was the last thing I was expecting.

This feeling was more about discomfort than actual pain. It didn’t get any worse so I was able to keep doing my thing. The run itself was a good one. The only Strava segment I have is about 0.6 and a slight uphill and ends at a traffic light which then begins another climb. I run quite often, just not where a lot of other runners go, so there aren’t a lot of comparisons with others.

I took the Arahis out again on Wednesday of last week and the same thing happened a few miles in—this feeling that my feet were on fire. I’d taken off in a new pair of Adrenaline 16s a few months back and felt that the toe box was a little narrow at first, but then I got used to them and of course they’re wonderful. That’s what I was thinking would happen on my second trip in the Arahis. No dice. I am still hopeful that it’ll be different.

Otherwise I’ll have to look at options. Arahis are stability shoes so I don’t want to use inserts. Perhaps a second pair of socks or even a little body glide-type lubricant. Heat means friction, which in turn means movement. I do have plenty of lace left over so another choice could be to minimize said movement by using that last pair of eyelets.

I have fresh rubber and I will come up with a solution in order to make them perfect.