New Shoes!

Hear me out, this is actually a great story. Yesterday, my boyfriend Andrew and I went to New York to see the "Meet the Oscars" exhibit at Grand Central and review an Off-Broadway show for work. While we were on the train from New Haven, a woman sat down next to us and we started talking about movies and wedding bands and other miscellaneous things. After a while she started doing something on her phone and I started telling Andrew about how I needed good running shoes if I was going to start training for my 5k. All of a sudden the woman (I never did get her name) interrupted us and said that I had to go to this place called Paragon Sports if I wanted to get a good pair of shoes to start, since the wrong shoes can cause injury.

So, after we got our pictures taken with a real live Oscar, we realized that we had about two hours to kill and decided to check out the store our train buddy had recommended. When we got there, I found someone to help, and she told me to take off my shoes, roll up my pants and get on the treadmill, running naturally. She then analyzed my gait, using a video taken of the backs of my legs. It was really cool and interesting...I found out I'm a front striker (the balls of my feet hit the ground first) and my legs basically stay straight (instead of my feet rolling in), both of which are actually really good habits to have, especially naturally, since it makes running more efficient and faster. I'll admit, I got a tiny ego boost even though I didn't have much to do with it. :)

I had no idea the gait analysis thing even existed before that, so it was pretty awesome. After she figured out what kind of runner I was, she brought out pairs of shoes for me to try on, and long story short, I bought a $100 pair of running shoes, which will be totally worth it if it makes my training easier; having a comfy pair of shoes will mean I have one less thing to worry about or distract me from my goal.