try love instead

Can't stop thinking about this video! Kind of a refreshing take on why to wear your seat belt. These days it seems marketers try and implement fear to get people to change their behavior. I prefer this approach.

I did something kind of crazy...

I've decided that I want to try and train for the Disney World Marathon in 2011. MARATHON. As in 26.2 miles. I got such a sudden surge of wanting to do this that I looked up a training schedule and punched it into my calendar. Of course I am still going to run the Nashville Half in April, but a week after that I'm going to start marathon training. Right now, when I refer to said marathon, we'll put quotations around it because it is so remote and hypothetical. "Marathon". That's better.

Did I say 26.2 miles? Well, right now I can barely think past 3 miles (hazard of taking a break from running for several months...) Luckily this "marathon" would take place January 9, 2011. And it sounds like fun. Running through all of the Disney Parks and seeing all the characters and all the rides! You pretty much HAVE to be trained to run a marathon if you ever want to do this in one day. And, well, I suppose I do.

I'll keep you posted on the "marathon". But for now (and the next 11 weeks) I'll be focusing on the half marathon in April!

consequences

So as you know, yesterday I mistakenly went running in my hiking tennis shoes, not my running tennis shoes. And today I am paying the consequences. What might those be, you ask?

Here's the deal. When I run, I do something called over-pronation. In english, over-pronating basically means that my foot rolls too far inward when my stride hits the ground, and doesn't correct itself quickly enough.

This Web site says: Because the foot over-pronates, it doesn’t roll back to the neutral position quickly enough as you begin to push off for your next step. This misaligned foot-fall affects the position of the lower leg, the knee, thigh and hip so that the force of your foot-fall is not absorbed in the best possible way. Some parts of your body like your lower back may bear more strain than it should, leading to back pain.

Looks something like this:



No thank you. Luckily, my running shoes are awesome and I am saved from the pain over-pronation causes in my life (except when I wear the wrong shoes). These babies have never let me down.



In and of themselves they help correct over-pronation, but in addition I have shoe inserts that correct the problem even more.



I swear, with all of this gear on my feet, you might think I look like this when I run down the street.



Even though my foot gear is intense...I'm not quite as bad off as this puppy. So without my foot casts (as I like to refer to my running shoes since they so comprehensively protect my feet) on yesterday, I am in a world of pain. Myyyyy kneeeeesssss huuurrrrtttt. And my back. And my body in general.

It's all starting to make sense to me now why I decided to blog about running--I have an outlet for all of my complaining! :)

hiking shoes

I was planning on running this morning, but it was cold. Many things don't happen because I am cold. Such as: getting out of bed, cleaning my room and moving (in general).

It warmed up a little later today, so I went straight from AK's Coffee where I was doing my homework to the park to go for a run. I suppose since I thought I was going to run this morning, I had myself convinced that I was wearing proper running attire. Here was my problem: I realized about a mile into my run that I wasn't wearing my running shoes--I was wearing these. Solomons were made to hike in, not go running. FYI, running in anything but running shoes is like riding a scooter to school vs. driving. It's much less comfortable and a lot slower.

I had a choice--I could suck it up, or I could stop and walk shamefully back to my car. I'm hard core. I ran in hiking shoes today. ;)