I'm Glad That I Know (and Meet) People Who Are Smarter Than I Am

I went to the Salt Lake Running Company today. One of the first things I told Scott (the worker) was that I'm a stupid runner. I like running, but I don't really know the best way to do it without injuring myself and just having an overall better experience.

That's where Scott comes in. I talked to him for about an hour and a half about shoes, clothes, gels, water belts, and Dingo (yes, Dingo did come up in the conversation). What prompted my visit was my five-mile training run this morning. My feet had some funny aches on my way back home so before I even took my shoes off, I went to the store to talk to them about it. Best guess as to what caused the pain - I was running unfamiliar terrain. But we talked about a lot of other things too.

It's time to retire my running outfit. Or at least parts of it. I'm wearing 7-year old pants (purchased prior to my mission and used for running on my mission) and three of the four zippers are broken, a 9 1/2-year old cotton t-shirt that's started ripping on one of the sleeve seams, and an old sweatshirt that's been shrunk in the dryer (the arms are still long enough, so it works). As accessories in the winter I also have pink, green, yellow, and purple striped gloves that were a Christmas present some years ago (thanks Tara!) and a purple and (I think creamish) knit beanie that Faith made and gave to me (thanks Faith! ... although, I've misplaced the hat as of late... sorry Faith!). I may post a picture of the whole ensemble sometime. Maybe.

So that was another reason for the trip to the running store. We talked a lot about clothes and I have some good ideas about what I might try. I'm really reluctant to retire my outfit though because I know it works. I know it's comfortable. There's no rubbing, chaffing, or anything else going on that makes the run more painful than it should be. However logic tells me... it's time to try something new. The sooner the better so I have time to find something that I won't hate running 26.2 miles in.

Another reason I'm really glad I went to the store and talked to Scott is because of what he mentioned regarding my current marathon training. I told him how a part of my "running stupid" is deciding to sign up for a marathon and not train properly for it. I told him I was supposed to run 17 miles and I really wasn't ready for it. He suggested that if I got up to only 18 before the marathon that that should be plenty far and would help me slow things down and prevent injury. We had talked about Jeff Galloway and his run/walk thing and how his training schedule gets you up to 26 before the marathon. I told him that I really liked it because then it gets the mental block out of the way and you feel ready about race day. But then I realized that my mental block should already be gone because I've already run this far. With that in mind, he suggested bumping the training back so the the 26 miles I'm supposed to run before the marathon lands on the day of the marathon. I hope you followed that. So, that's what I'm going to do. I bumped back the training, so rather than this, my life now looks like this:

(it also means that today I ran one mile longer than I needed to)
the only difference is the date of the run. but it means that next week I only have to run 12 miles instead of 17!

much better. (: