Bustin' Out the Ugly Shoes

I’m slowly allowing myself to accept the fact that I may be over the hump with my recovery issues, and back among the ‘in training’ world of runners. My first small acknowledgement was putting my ’26.2’ magnet back on the back of my truck. I bought it in March after I finished the marathon, but it was adding to my frustration with not being able to run, so I had relocated it to the fridge in the garage until I was back logging some miles. Now it has happily returned to it’s magnetic home on the truck, and seems to be enjoying the fresh air again.

Got up at sunrise this morning for a short run, and took another major step towards my mental/physical return to running by digging my new shoes out of the closet, introducing them to the feet that they will be embracing repeatedly over the next few months, and allowing them to roam around the neighborhood for the first time. I bought these shoes about a week after the marathon since they were on sale, and one of my 2 pairs of training shoes was well over the 300 mile mark. I’ve run in Asics Gel Nimbus for several years now, so I went shopping knowing that was what I was going to buy. The interesting thing is that the Gel Nimbuses, or perhaps Gel Nimbii, weren’t all on sale, just this one particular color. I asked the very nice girl working at the store why this pair was on sale, and her refreshingly honest response was “we’ve got a bunch of those in that color in stock, and nobody really buys them because they’re kinda ugly”.

Never one to pass up a sale, for whatever reason, and never one to be terribly concerned about how ugly I’m looking while I’m running, I told her I’d like a pair of the ugly ones in a 10.5. I kinda felt sorry for them like the scraggly looking mutt at the pound. I’ll refrain from making the obvious pun about having a good soul/sole, but as long as they keep my feet happy then we’ll be great friends. I don’t really think they’re all that ugly, but black and silver isn’t the most appealing combo in a shoe, and I like being able to refer to them as my uglies. Here’s a photo of the uglies before they got excited and ran away:

2.8 miles this morning, and everything felt pretty good, although my knee was sore from the start as opposed to gradually feeling sore. This week I’m trying to keep each run’s mileage at 3 miles or less, and next week I’m hoping to up that to 4 miles or less and see how things feel. I’ll keep adjusting my per-run mileage and weekly total mileage each week to build my base mileage back up, then plan to start a true training program in July for a marathon in November. I LOVE running in the heat and really getting my sweat on, and we’re having record highs in the 90s in the Raleigh area right now, so it’s all good. Thinking I might give yoga a first shot on Sunday, if I can fit it in with all the Mother’s Day festivities.