After a day's break, Mike and I decided to try for a run yesterday. We were busy cleaning the house and grocery shopping, among other things, so we wanted to fit a run into a specific time slot. The time slot happened to be very soon after I had stuffed myself with a cheap cheese pizza. I figured maybe I would get a gross sloshy feeling from the food bouncing around in my stomach, but nothing major.
Well, five minutes in I got a twinge in my lower abdomen on the left side. Three seconds later it escalated to one of those pains that translates as "If you don't stop running now, you're just going to fall over." I walked it off for a few minutes but it came back after another minute of jogging. Again and again and again.We only had this small time slot in which to run, and my digestive system was not having any of it. My legs were fine--in fact, they were itching to run. My lungs had no complaints. It was just this one little part of my intestine that said, "Oh no you don't, missy; you slow down to a boring walk. No elevated heart rate for you!"
So we made it just a bit into the north end of the arboretum, exited to campus, and went back home through campus. A total of about 7 minutes of running. That would have been okay if we had been going up those killer hills, but no, it was flat. I wanted to run again later, but between cleaning and dinner and company, it didn't happen.
What I did accomplish, though, is taking pictures of my laughably bad shoes!
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| Skechers--it's teh suck. |
I bought these years and years ago, probably for high school gym class. I never wore them outside, because running shoes have never been part of my "personal style." I like how they look only when paired with other designated exercise attire. So these are still in good shape; however, I'm pretty sure they're mostly for show. I will say they have a good bounce in the sole, but the primary fabric is this strange meshy material that provides very little support. The ankle thing in the back there rubs up against my skin all the time. And the plastic details around the lace holes are just for show. I'm pretty sure no one goes out shopping for running shoes and comes home with Skechers.
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| Nice bulbous heel. Wut? |
Buuuuut like most things at the moment, being a college student, it's not really in my budget to go get a gait analysis and custom fit shoes. Plus, it would be advisable for me to keep running for say, a few months, to make sure I'm actually going to stick with this. I don't want to be like the people that buy ice skates, use them once, and then stick them in the back of the closet, passing them on to their children 30 years later. If I buy running shoes, or anything else that's an investment, I want to get a good return. Which brings me to my leg pictures. I don't think I can fairly call them "before" pictures anymore, so I'll just call them "early on" pictures.
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| Any muscles you see here are already an improvement. | | |
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So I've got these new thigh muscles. Those are the ones that felt like they were going to burst through my skin while jogging the hills, remember? Yeah. And my calves were previously about the thickness of a normal person's arms. They've already gotten a bit better too. Oh, and note what I call the awesome tiger tan on my feet. That would be from my sweet cage sandals. I usually don't like trends in fashion very much, buuuut those I dig.
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| I think I spy a little bit of tone in those calves... WIN! |
I'm about to go on a really long jog. I've run into (no pun intended!) some very frustrating situations today, and I'm not satisfied from the crampy run we did yesterday, so it's on today. No mercy. There will be a blog about it. I'll see you there.
