New Shoes! & Mindy's Practice Run

Wednesday I did speed work on the track with Amber. We did 8 x 200 meters, with 200 meters walking inbetween. We did some good work, averaging 51 seconds per fast 200, but I felt like my shins were going to just break every time I ran they hurt so bad! When I got home, I soaked them, rubbed them down and put on my compresson socks and that seemed to do the trick, but I still had to wonder why my shins have been hurting so much lately when I do speed work when they were totally fine on my last long run.

I asked this question on twitter and got 2 reponses:

@JamesonBull - "I had something similar. Found it was tighness in the bottom/arch of my foot. Rolled it out with a rolling pin or golf ball."


I tried that, but it's hard to say if it really worked or not...


@JHCTriathlon - "new shoes: a pair for longer/slower runs and a different pair for tempo runs + speedwork. And... sounds like your body has not adjusted to the speedwork? shin pain is usually a sign of bad/dead shoes and/or too fast too soon or hard surfaces running hard...move speedwork to track (if you are not already) or to soft trails and see if that helps. !!"


I thought that sounded spot on! I totally am not used to speedwork yet, and though I did run on the track Wednesday, I usually do run on sidewalks or paved bike paths. Then I went and looked on my log to see how many miles I've put on those shoes and it was 348 miles! Yep, sounds like I needed new shoes!

I didn't have time to get new shoes for myself that day, but thought it was more important to get Ethan some because his toes were sticking out of his old ones! I got him 2 pairs. My kids are so spoiled!

George may or may not have been trying to put those little white shoes on in the background...

Thursday I didn't have any running. I swam then went on a fun bike ride with George in the bike trailer!

Here's some background music.

Friday was supposed to be my long run, but I ended up not going because Pete woke up just as I was about to get up at 5am with the flu. I didn't really think it would be nice to leave him with the kids, even if they were all asleep. It was ok, though, I was supposed to go run with Mindy later in the day, and I was a little worried about running more in those shoes anyway.

At 1:00, I dropped the other kids off at a friend's house and met Mindy at the school for the "Girls On The Run" practice run. I got there just as they were handing out new shoes to each girl so that was really exciting! It's kind of hard to tell in this picture, but look how cute Mindy's are:

After the girls all got their new shoes on and the buddies had all arrived (I am Mindy's buddy), we went outside to do our run! The lady in charge had planned out our practice run to be 3 times around the block the school is on. She said it would be a little less than a 5k, but it ended up being just about half. It was hard work for those little girls though, I was so proud of all of them when they finished!

Mindy and I started out at about the middle then quickly worked our way up to the front of the pack, but only for a little while because she had to stop and walk so a few people passed us. Then a couple of them kept walking to a certain point, then running again so Mindy said, "when they stop to walk again, we'll run." She also wanted to stop and walk when they started running, but I said that since we would be in front of them it would be hard to tell when they stopped so we just stopped whenever Mindy needed to. We went back and forth with those girls for a while and it was fun. Mindy would go so fast when she was running, then she would have to stop and walk. I tried to teach her how to relax and get into a good rhythem, or just to run slower, but that's a hard thing to explain. And I guess it's a good thing that she naturally wants to run fast, we just need to build up her endurance.

Every time we passed the start/finsih line, they would hand the girls a braclett or silly band to keep track of how many laps they'd done. That was a cute idea. It was also really cute that they had gone around and written little messages all the way around to encourage the girls as they ran:

This picture was actually taken by a friend of mine later in the day who posted it on twitter not even knowing what it was for, but thinking it was cool. :) 

On the last lap, when I tried to encourage Mindy to keep running, she said she was going to die! We stopped and walked again. When we started running again, Mindy started singing, "We are young!" I added on, "so let's set the world on fire..." then we both sang, "we can burn brighter! than the suuuuuu wowowuuuun!" It was awesome! I was so happy to be running with her and sharing that great moment with her! That gave her the energy to get to the next courner, and we only had about half a block to go!

Then we saw the little girl who had been in the lead almost the whole time (my friend, Amber, was her buddy and she had just gotten done running 10 miles before she came!). We were kind of catching up to her! So I told Mindy, "Let's see if we can make it a tie!" And Mindy just took off! I couldn't even keep up with her. (And she was "going to die!" a few minutes ago!) When she caught up to the other girl, she started running faster too! It was an exciting sprint to the finish! The other girl stopped about 10 yards before the finish line so Mindy got to finish first! (Not that it was really a race or anything, but I've got to brag...)

We sat down and stretched and cheered for the the other girls as they finished. Some girls were more than a lap behind us so we cheered and gave them a lot of encouragment as they passed! For the last few girls, we all made a tunnel with our hands and had them run through it to finish. It was fun to see the girls all support each other so much like that! 

We ran 1.56 miles in 17:49, which is pretty darn good for a 9 year old! My shins were hurting even after that, though. Arg! 

We all got in a big circle and stretched as a group then played a little running game. Then it was time to go. We are doing the 5k next Saturday so I hope it goes well! That will be a long ways for them!

The New Shoes Saga To Be Continued...