Running Training (16th September 2007)

I’m going to do a half marathon later on this morning so looking forward to that. On my schedule I have to run for 2 hours 30 minutes, so I will probably have to run an extra hour on top of the race to make my time up. Should be good.

Last Sunday I ran for 2 hours 30 minutes, then did an extra 35 minutes of jogging/walking. Total mileage covered was 19.6 miles. Didn’t drink anything all the way round! Certainly not recommended - some water or energy drink would’ve been best, but I felt fine if a little tired towards the end. People do tend to over drink would running long distance races so at least I didn’t do that! I think you’ll find the most dehydrated runner in a race will be the winner so there are some good things to be said for getting used to a certain level of dehydration!

I bought a pair of cheaper running shoes less than 2 months ago, and was very pleased with them up until this week. Apart from the fact that I didn’t like the tongue, and the laces were rubbish as they kept coming undone especially when they got soaking wet. In fact I swapped the laces from an old pair of shoes that I like, and that solved the laces problem.

However, this week I felt the cushioning in these shoes wasn’t up to much and the support around the ankle wasn’t very good. Probably to do with the fact that I do a lot of my running off road, and down stony tracks - on top of running 19 miles in them last Sunday, and this was mostly off road.

So spent a good few hours yesterday trying different running shoes on, and over an hour in Decathlon. I tried maybe 8 pairs on in that shop. That’s the good thing about Decathlon - they have all their shoes out on display and you can easily try different pairs on without bothering a salesperson. Or should I say being bothered by a salesperson! Bought a pair of off road running shoes in the end, but thought I will probably have to buy another pair more suited to running marathons in as well.