Thursday, July 10, 2008

It's gotta be the shoes


I am the fastest man alive.

Seriously I am. I got my new shoes and they make all the difference in the world. Last week I headed over to Fleet Feet and told them I needed some shoes. I expected them to have some ideas, but they surprised me. They made me roll up my pants, put on some "demo shoes" and run on a treadmill for a few minutes. They recorded the way my feet hit the ground and showed it to me on some monster plasma. After I was finally able to pull my eyes away from my sexy calves, I saw that I have decent form with a slight pronation on my right foot.

Dude came back with 3 pair of shoes and had me try them on and run around a bit with each pair. This guy was really into shoes (I dare someone to truthfully tell me he doesn't have a foot fetish). For me, they were all the same. They felt like shoes. They were all lighter than the current New Balance running shoes I was training in. They all locked my foot in and felt great when I hit the ground. They were shoes. But shoe-guy was talking about the wave technology blah blah blah and cooling release this and that. I didn't feel any of it. I truly felt that if I told this Shoe McGee that they were all the same to me, he would either cry or go OJ Simpson on me. I decided that since the first pair I tried on stared with an M, and my last name starts with an M, that's a good enough reason to pick those. So I made up some stuff about my foot feeling more secure in those shoes (so he didn't cry/kill me) and was on my way.

I'll pop a picture of my shoes up later, but they are mostly white with yellow and black. Yellow and black are Pittsburgh colors (Pirates, Steelers, Latin Kings-oops- , Penguins), which is pretty cool since it's my good Western PA customers who helped me pay for them. So I decided to name my shoes after my favorite Pittsburgh sports guy and also a dude who liked to do things for charity: My left shoe is named Roberto and my right shoe is named Clemente.

Roberto Clemente and I went for our long run on Saturday, 6 miles. And you know what, with Roberto Clemente on my side, I felt no pain. The run was awesome. The best I have felt running since high school track. The pace was perfect and we finished almost exactly on time for our group. I officially ran a quarter of a marathon last Saturday. If I ran a quarter of a marathon each week, I could technically say I ran a marathon in 506hrs (with a few weeks of work, sleeping, playing poker and watching TV in the process). Not too shabby.

This week is 7 miles and I'll have to run it on my own in Wisconsin. My watch has GPS, so I should be able to make up my own course without a problem. The problem, as it has been for the entire training so far, is I'll be out late Friday night. 2 weeks ago I hit 4:30am and it was too late. Last week I got to bed around 1am and it was fine. I'll work on something in the middle and see what makes Goldilocks happy.

Here are the totals so far, 31 miles run, 1 pair of shoes purchased, 7 people donated to date, 6 lbs lost and 1 book about Snakes on a Plane read (I have to prepare for emergencies on the plane ride over or back).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love the blog. Sadly, I voted no on the poll though. Just don't see it happening this wknd. Too much Favre drama going on in Wisconsin...could see you getting caught up in it and "forgetting" to run.

Ace said...

I hope your shoes are just like the ones in the picture. Those are sweet!

And Clemente, very nice on the naming. I was thinking Bumble and Bee but I can see you going with Robby. Just stay away from airplanes for charitable causes - ooops!