I’m not sure how I missed this, but I did. On Tuesday I ran my daily allotment indoors at work. The new gym at the office is nice and is definitely much much cooler than the temperature outside right now so I opted to run on a treadmill. After my highly successful run on Sunday I was expecting an even better one since this one was going to be in the cool gym. Instead my leg problems came back. Ouch.

I made it through the run on Tuesday and went back on Wednesday. Wednesday was harder though and I wasn’t able to really get going. My legs were really bothering me and I was having trouble even getting a good walk going. So about halfway through the run, very frustrated, I started thinking “what has changed?”. I forced myself to concentrate on my various body parts as I was running and at some point I realized that my foot was slipping slightly in my shoe.

Huh? This shoe is great. How can it slip?

Oh. I didn’t tie it tight enough.

I got off the treadmill and retied my shoes. The rest of the run went great. How do you mess that up? I think it’s because there is only one bench in the locker room and it’s kind of high and awkwardly placed. I usually rush in and change as fast as possible. My guess is I’m rushing through the shoe tying too and not really making sure they’re well seated.

Today I ran my last r15,w5 x2 outdoors (it was nice and cloudy) and it went great. My shoes were well tied. Just goes to show you how one little thing overlooked can seriously impact you over time.

I wasn’t the only one struggling. Mom sends this email:

For me, this week has been bad for running. It was a real mind over muscle matter, I just did not want to do it. But….the glove has been thrown or something like that, so I made myself get out and move my legs some of the time. Some of the time I said forget it and ate ice cream. This morning I felt really bad, I guess I didn’t drink enough before I left and since I must be losing all the liquid in my cells in this humidity down here my stomach responded by feeling sick. Or maybe it (the stomach) didn’t like the cup of coffee I drank before I ran.

I ran for 2 miles and realized I could choose between walking and throwing up so I walked. I found out I can walk as fast or faster than I can run. That is another wonderful thing about the Garmin watch, you can see how fast you are going at any time. I do not understand why my stomach did not like running but did not mind walking fast. Maybe I will skip the coffee if I run in the mornings.

MOM! Chapter 5, Part 2. Especially page 94:

• Bad Brew
• Heat Acclimatization

In other news: Even though I captured the run with the watch, MotionBased refuses to accept any uploads without GPS data. Doh. Who would have thought that you’d actually have to move around the planet instead of just run in place if you wanted to capture the effort via GPS? I’d better order one of those foot pod thingies if I’m going to keep running inside.