Archives for March 22, 2006

The rain is expected to roll in beginning tonight and continue on into the weekend. Spring is here, but it’s tough to tell. Taking advantage of the break in the rain, I headed off on the dirt trails around the office for another “sort of long” run.

After a mile warm up, I began to run mile repeats. I programmed my GPS to beep when I had run the distance of 1 mile. After the mile, I planned a quarter mile to recover at a slow jog. Then the cycle would begin again.

It’s been a while since I have done these and they can be challenging if you run them too fast. My 1st mile repeat was just about 7:53 minutes and the 2nd was 8:08. During the 2nd repeat it was more difficult to keep the pace up because I was running into a headwind.

I turned back towards the office as I began my 3rd mile interval. But I never did finish this interval. Mother Nature was calling and my body was trying to answer. The problem was that I was about 2 miles away from the bathroom and there were no bushes adequate to conceal any squatting activity. I had to slow the pace just to make it to the bathroom without any issues. It ended up taking me 8:32 for that 3rd interval and the following mile was 9:03 minutes.

I hate when this happens to me. Some have the luck of being regular, but I take it as it comes and hope that it comes when it is convenient. Roundtrip was 7.06 miles (1:00:26)

My friends and colleagues wear fancy shoes and heeled boots with ease. They tower over me when we walk side by side. Okay, I guess that would happen anyhow, but never mind that. My point is that while they have closets full of fancy, colorful, high-heeled shoes and boots, I have a closet of running shoes (my current pair and a retired pair for walking) and a couple of ugly, flat, “comfortable” shoes.

A couple of years ago, my podiatrist told me “as you get older” the Achilles tendon shortens. I was *only* 37 years old then. He said that the tendon is further shortened in women who wear shoes with heels because the high heel acts to keep the tendon in a shorted position all of the time. By my wearing shoes with a heel, modest as mine were, problems in my ankles and legs were being caused during my running. My choices were give up running or give up the heel. So now I wear only those comfortable shoes that are anything but fashionable and I happily run.

As for my boots…I tried to wear them yesterday. I put them on in the morning and by the time I was at work my ankles ached. When I was on the mill for my lunchtime run, my ankles really hurt. So when I returned to my office, I pulled them off and just hid my feet under my desk hoping that none of my high-heeled colleagues would come by to talk with me. Today, I am back in my brown Merrell Jungle Mocs and my ankles are recovering from my day of attempted fashion. I envy those who can pull off the high heeled thing, but then again they envy me for being able to run as I do.