total program distance: 15 miles
pain level: naught
On Saturday morning I headed to Fit Right NW on 23rd to get some new shoes. The store came very highly recommended, and I wasn't disappointed. The woman who helped was very attentive and professional, and the gait analysis was interesting. My left foot lands almost perfectly neutral (yay!) but my right foot turns out (boo!). She recommended neutral shoes, because its apparently better to undercorrect overpronation than to overcorrect a good landing. I got a pair of Mizuno's – I had never heard of the brand but I gotta say, they feel great. Also, on Friday night I picked up the ChiRunning DVD from the library and watched part of it. Stick with me, there is a point to all this, and that point is that my five-mile run on Saturday felt GREAT! Perhaps even amazing. I kept the pace up, I felt almost no pain or discomfort at all, and right around mile 4 I fell into this awesome groove like I was barely working at all. I almost didn't want to stop at five miles, but we’ve all heard the horror stories of the over-enthusiastic so I reined it in. I was on a total high the rest of the day.
Sunday I lifted weights and went for a walk as my cross-training. It was a gorgeous fall day in Portland, bright blue skies, unusually warm, beautiful foliage. Today is bowling day; beforehand I'm going to ride the stationary bike for a little bit. I've put my mental foot down that Friday is going to be my honest-to-goodness rest day, no planned exercise. It's a struggle for me to take rest days - I think because I'm terrified of falling off the exercise wagon and putting on all the weight I lost. You hear and read all these stories of yo-yo dieters, and how only a small percentage of people manage to lose weight and keep it off. I've kept it off for about…seven years now. At this point I feel confident that I won't gain it back, because I love exercising and how it makes me feel, and I never want to be as uncomfortable with myself as I was when I was heavier. But I still have those concerns in the back of my mind, and they make it very hard to be lazy for even one day.
Digression: So the Red Sox won the World Series last night. As a life-long Yankees fan, I find it interesting how the Sox are being labeled the new Yankees because of their huge payroll and burgeoning dynasty, and more insidiously because the Sox are developing the casual, non-fanatical "fans" who only wear Sox ballcaps and watch Sox games when they get to the playoffs. This is funny to me because I am a born-and-bred New Yorker who has always rooted for the Yankees, and my roommate is a born-and-bred Massachusetts-ian who is a diehard Sox fan (somehow we avoid coming to blows). So I have dealt for years, especially living so far from NY, with the taunts of "Oh, the Yankees, well its easy to root for them, no wonder you're a fan." (What I want to tell these people is that being a true NY fan means I also root for the Jets. THE JETS, people! I've had more than my fair share of heartbreak.) And now she is facing the same sort of thing for her BS cap. I find it amusing. At least I don't have to worry about getting taunted for picking an easy football team to love. The Jets are like...I can't even think of a suitable metaphor. They are like the burnt, deflated souffle in the NFL kitchen.
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