New shoes! New shoes!

Yesterday (Saturday) was the long awaited trip to Advance Performance over in Peterborough. I got there later than I'd aimed for (10.30am-ish rather than 9am) and expected to have to wait ages to have my gait checked, but there was no queue, and an unnervingly young and fit looking guy spent the next twenty minutes or so either watching me flail on the treadmill (stupidly, I didn't think to wear a sports bra), or sat at my feet prodding my trainers.

Its times like that when I do find myself wondering what the heck I'm doing. I feel like a little bit of a fraud because inside I still feel five stone heavier than I am now, and I forget for a moment that I'm not. Every time I'm in this kind of situation, the feeling of 'faking it' lessens, but anyway, I digress.

Turns out that I am not a 'neutral runner' after all. Yeah, thanks a bunch, dodgy gait assessor at Niketown London. I am a pretty bad (or good, depending on your view) over-pronator. I laughed when AP guy told me - haha, I can't even run properly! Well, it was funny to me, anyway. Watching the replay of my feet rolling inwards, I could see straight away why my knees have been hurting, and it turns out I've been wearing a size of shoe at least 1/2 a size too small, probably a whole size. I came out of there rather lightened in the wallet, but with a pair of Mizuno Wave Alchemy's which should come very very close to curing the problem.

Saturday was also my cross country run day. It was a shambles. It was very very muddy, and very slippy, and my knees hurt almost straight away (I didn't use my Mizuno's, because of the mud). I got so fed up in the end that I walked a good third of it, and bent the poor other-half's ear badly about how miserable I felt. I don't think cross country is for me! I know there is the Hellrun to do, but after that, I think there will be no more cross country for me!

Today is a 13.1 mile run. Thats a little bit more than what's on the schedule, but its an easy route for us to work out, and hey, it'll give me a baseline time for Grunty Fen - even though I'm not getting as worked up about time any more, I still want to have some idea of what I'll do, and check that I can actually manage that distance without dying. It's looking like a warm, sunny day today; I think I'd rather it was a bit cooler or breezier, but it is what it is. I'm also guessing its probably a bit bad to break the new shoes in with such a long run, but considering how bad the Pegasus's are for my feet, it seems mad to go on wearing them for any longer.

I'll post later about how the run goes. Wish me luck!