My Ruby Slippers

The first time I bought honest-to-goodness running shoes was in Minnesota at a store called the Running Room.  I was home for a weekend of highs and lows which included both the wedding of my oldest friend and the funeral of my beloved grandfather (whose passing had served as the catalyst that got me running).  I did the purchase by the book, had my gait assessed and tried in vain to hide my disappointment as the clerk strode past the vibrant reds and blues of the neutral running shoes to select a pair of grey and violet stability shoes.  Not wanting to defeat the purpose of the trip, I dutifully purchased the recommended pair and left the store wishing there was something a bit brighter in my bag.

The first time I ran in them it felt like I was floating, they were that much of an improvement.  However, they remained aesthetically uninspiring.  I looped Central Park feeling like my shoes were the sensible grandmother of the shoes on the other runners, and nothing says slow down and be careful like a sensible grandmother.  My body was feeling lean and fast, I wanted my shoes to feel the same way. 

After much consultation with people who know more than I do (namely former high school theatre friend turned marathon guru, Alyssa) I decided to put in the work to adapt my gait so I could run in neutral shoes and began the search for the best pair of bright red shoes on the market.  Turns out there are a lot of shades of red, but when they're shades of red used to make running shoes they're never called red.  They're called things like InfraRed, Core Energy, Hot Punch, and Papaya and when they arrive you discover they're really orange or pink, especially women's shoes because everyone knows that pink is for girls.  I stayed the course and you can imagine my delight when I unwrapped the tissue paper to find these:

Adidas Adizero Boston 2W - Fresh Out the Box

I couldn't have been happier, especially since I'd ordered two pairs in the hopes that these would be the shoe.  I had enough that I would be able to wear the reds for the October half marathon I'd been working toward, my final qualifying race for the 2012 NYC Marathon.  On race day they felt great, they felt like the right thing to be wearing when I reached the culmination of this year-long goal, and the search for the shoes proved to be worthwhile.

In the months to follow I stayed loyal to the Adizero Boston, ordering whatever colors happened to be on sale through Eastbay or Zappos.  I've ended up with a couple pairs that are melon-colored that do the job but they just don't stack up to the original reds.  Blame it on the effective branding of the University of Wisconsin, that color will for me forever symbolize the pinnacle of athleticism (regardless of the current standing of the Badger football program).  Or, you can blame Dorothy's legendary trek through the Land of Oz to the Emerald City in her iconic Ruby Slippers, what's not to love about a long hike set to a catchy tune?  Either way, it has become clear to me the past year that I feel much better running when the shoes are red.

I'm approximately 11 weeks and 315 miles out from the marathon with my longest training runs ahead.  In this time I will burn through one pair of shoes completely and will need to have my race shoes adequately broken in before November 4th.  I've been ordering and returning shoes the past few weeks, searching for the perfect red for race day and am currently sitting on two serious contenders:

Adidas Adizero Aegis 2W

and

Adidas Adizero Boston 3W

Both are certainly good options, I'm sure the choice will become clear as I'm breaking them in.  Either way, I'm thrilled that on November 4th, like Dorothy before me, I'll have my own pair of Ruby Slippers to carry me through all five boroughs of New York and back home to the finish, just a few blocks from my apartment on the Upper West Side.  

"Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out." -Iris Murdoch, Author & Philosopher

 *Do some good with your worn out running shoes and donate them to one of these charities!

Newton's Law

Newton's first law of physics, as translated from its original Latin, is: Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed.

I learned this rule from an episode of 3-2-1 Contact sometime in the mid-80's in its pre-school derivation of: An object in motion tends to remain in motion, and an object at rest tends to remain at rest.  In physics this law pertains to inertia, but its application to how people establishing an exercise routine define "momentum" is uncanny.

The impact of momentum is amazing. When it's working in your favor it drives you to go further and faster than you thought possible; but, when you've lost it, it seems like the steps to even get out the door are insurmountable.  After securing my guaranteed entry into the 2012 New York City Marathon last October I spent a good seven months generally at rest.  My running dropped off to the point where it could be most generously described as sporadic.  I didn't even have any sort of regular exercise routine and averaged, at best, two workouts per week.  In that time I was a wee bit foolish and ran two half marathons and a 10k completely untrained and, thankfully, did not injured myself. 

When I started racing I started very strong, knocking out a 15k in 8:27 minutes per mile after just six weeks of consistent running and really not feeling like I ever pushed myself during the race.  My 10k PR that season came in at 50:49 and 8:11 minutes per mile after taking a month-long break from running, surprising considering I walked half a mile of the race due to improper rest stop planning. 

Needless to say, seven months of rest did not do much to maintain those times and my paces have suffered.  I could choose to look at the decline in my paces and criticize myself for letting it go, but I think that would be completely unproductive.  I'm choosing, instead, to look at it as a positive.  In only six weeks of consistent training, I got that far. 

In 103 days I will be running the ING NYC Marathon, a fact that the ticker on the New York Road Runners website will not let me forget.  That's about 15 weeks.  That's two and a half times as long as it took to get me to an 8:27 m/m 15k.  If the logic behind Runner's World's race time equivalent calculator is sound, that pace would predict for me a 3:59:25 marathon.

So, I've got 15 weeks, a month of reasonably consistent training behind me, and a week-old 10k pace that predicts a 04:01:00 marathon.  I'm thinking that between now and November 4th, if I can harness the momentum I've gathered in the past month, I can not only finish this marathon strong but can get myself respectably below the 4 hour mark. 

"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare."  -Juma Ikangaa, 1989 NYC Marathon Winner