Must not have been the shoes!

Well, you know what they say about the best-laid plans – things don’t always work out the way they should. Much like the plan that my insoles would turn me into a rocket ship, launching me down the road toward surpassing my Chicago marathon goal.

It all seemed like it would work. I was finally feeling comfortable in my feather-lite trainers. Thinking that maybe I could get a bit better ride from enhancing the insole, I took the ones from another pair of shoes that I liked. This worked, but could there be even a better solution? Curse you Road Runner Sports and all of your promotional emails.

I just had to have them – the motion-control insoles would be the answer. They arrived, and I gave them a three-mile test on the treadmill. All seemed well. So I figured, this week’s long run was the shortest one I will have (6 miles), so why not try them there.

All was well for the first couple of miles. I was cruising up Mt. Belleville like a Kenyan. However, after the turn-around I started to feel some burning on my right arch. It kept getting worse. Did it stop Doug – no way! I kept on going all the way back to the house (which was also the finish line). After a cool-down and some stretching, there it was – a huge blister. All of my excitement last week for what?

Now that I have a pretty solid base of fitness built up, my perspective has changed. As I wrote before, now it’s all about tweaking and fine-tuning. Take something good and make it better. Well apparently using my old Kayano insoles in my trainers is about as good as it gets in the shoe department. Not a big deal, I guess I would rather learn this lesson now than have a bigger problem down the road.

I was thinking as I was running along the country roads early last Sunday, I must look like an ugly quilt. I mean, everything matches and all, but all of my stuff comes from different places. My visor came from the Ironman store (figured if I wore the Ironman logo, it might serve to intimidate the other runners a bit, at least until they cross the finish line well before me). My sunglasses are from some cycling catalog. I think they are Optic Nerve, not sure if that’s a good brand or not. Pretty cool though, they get darker as it gets brighter. Maybe they should make glasses that get darker if you fall off your pace, it might serve to hide your shame in long races. My shirt is some sleeveless cool max shirt from a guy in Kentucky where I order all of my real estate imprinted stuff. It has to be sleeveless so my Pythons can get out of their cages. In reality, my arms are not really pythons, I stopped going to the gym about three months ago after I figured that maybe I could lose more weight if I stopped lifting so much – I am so confused. I do have a pretty cool looking Special Forces tattoo on my right shoulder that makes up for my lack of having huge arms. Actually, the guy I order all of this stuff from is Ty Rideout and they do a spectacular job at great prices. Check out his web site. Virtually all of my clothing has my Peters Knese real estate logo on it. I thought about having a Peters Knese Racing logo made for more clothing, but that might be a bit much. My shorts were from a company called Race Day. They have a bunch of cool pockets for Gu and what ever else I might be carrying. Sort of running’s answer to a pop-up camper. You can fit all sorts of stuff in them both. My socks were from Puma (these cotton fellows could have lead to the blister problem). Good to wear around the house, but all cotton might not have been a good choice for the road and all of the big hills. I also was wearing my RoadID around my ankle, my Ipod with the sports band, My Timex Bodylink watch and it companion heart rate monitor and GPS armband transmitter. Its like you could frickin see me from space. Thank god I run at 6 AM, who is up that early to laugh at me? Finally, my Asics Gel DS Trainers, tied strongly on my feet. I may seem like I was planning to run around the earth, but actually only 6 miles on this day.

Anyway, back to the blister. I guess on the grand running scale, this was sort of a minor problem. I will be back on the treadmill tomorrow. I think I am going to make a pledge to keep things a bit simpler in the future.

Another thing I realized – my easy weeks from here to the end are gone. I have one hundred and three days until the Bank of America Marathon in Chicago. I guess that is about 12 or 13 weeks. During this time I will run three more half marathons, and six long runs of over 14 miles. This might give me something more important to focus on than insoles!