Is It The Shoes?

Between Friday's weigh-in where I was down 1.8 pounds, and a great Friday and Saturday of run and bike training, I feel pretty good.  I ran Saturday morning with the Park Hill Ladies' Run Club, and struggled again a little bit with the respiratory stuff.  I am going to find a way to beat it.  Once I do, I know that I am strong enough to crank out the miles that have been giving me trouble.  I took my dog, Blue, with me to the run, and there were a couple of other dogs there, too.  Blue, being the competitive and strong-willed dog that he is, was determined to be first in the pack and as a result, I woke up with an extremely sore right arm on Sunday morning.  It was either hold him back with all of my strength, or wind up facedown in the dirt while he triumphantly defeated all the other dogs.  I wish I could steal his energy sometimes, and if I had two wishes, the other one might be that he listen to me more than just occasionally when I say "heel".

I made a big mistake in ordering new shoes this week, and really paid the price after Saturday's run.  I have been wearing Pearl Izumi Synchropace II and III for the past few years.  They are knee and ankle miracle shoes for a runner like me who is on the heavy side and tends to over pronate a bit.  I just wore out my fifth pair.  Because things are a little tight lately with our wedding coming up, I had the genius idea of trying to save some money on running shoes, and I found two new pairs of the old, original Synchropace shoes on eBay in my size for $49 each.  That is less than half of what I pay for my current model.  I ordered both pairs, and ran four miles in a shiny purple pair on Saturday morning.  The resulting giant blisters kept me from running again yesterday.  Not good.  So, needless to say, I reordered my old faithful pair last night and am waiting patiently for them to arrive, while wearing their tired and dirty predecessors.   My knees are craving the spring of great new shoes, scheduled to arrive by Friday. I shouldn't have messed with a good thing.

Today's workout will consist of treadmill intervals of 5 X 2:00 at 9:30 pace again with warmup, cool down and jogging in between, and I probably will do a bike course or swim after that.  I am working on coordinating my Runner's World half marathon plan with my run club schedule and adding in a little tri training, too.  I think I need to get a big wall calendar and just sit down and schedule it all out.  Otherwise, I may lose my mind trying to keep it all straight along with all of the races and, oh yeah, the getting married stuff, too.  Anybody have any great tips for keeping it all straight?

Looking forward to a productive training week, and really excited about my next race coming up on Valentine's Day.  More on Wednesday!