Out again for another 40 minute moderate paced run. Compared to Tuesday, I was about 100 yards short of my 20 minute turn around point (loafing a bit on the first mile), but turned up the speed so I finished just 3 second under 40 minutes, so better time than 2 days ago.

I should be at the Elite racing event tonight, which is a kickoff event for the PF Changs Marathon, a practice run featuring Frank Shorter as the pace dude. But I have a higher commitment for a family birthday didder, so sorry Team-D, I cannot be there.

I remember last year when I was just starting my first real training, I felt like I only had one speed of running- the “Oh My Gawd I Wish I Was Doing Anything Else Thank Running” speed. This was before the track workouts with Team-D and really before running any real events like the New Times 10k and the Half Marathon itself. The track workouts really focusses on dialing in the runs at different paces and intensities, and affter many miles have passed by, you slowly get a better sense of, “Hey this is a swift 10k pace” or “better notch it up to that 5k pace”.

Of course, after some layoffs from running, this gets rusty, and I find myself back in the one gear mode. But after some more outings, the old pace-ometer comes back.

I barely noticed, but at 6:00 AM, with the sun just cracking red over the horizon, it was actually somewhat cool out there, like the Phoenix summer has some big cracks in it. Elsewhere in the country, people are likely already wearing sweaters and coats.

I am sporting some new running shoes, finally. I went to Performace Footwear in Tempe — one of their reps hgad given an overview on shoes and gear for Team D a few weeks back, and I was interested in their footstrike analysis for the shoe fit. You run on a treadmill and they have a DV camera pointed right at the back of your heels, and after a minute or so on the tread, they place back the video in frame stops, so they can analyze your foot motion and determine the family of shoes the would be best fit.

This was certainly better then the eyeball at Sports Authority wall of shoes method I used last year, thought I had no shoe problems beyond needing some extra sole cushions. My foot strike analysis shoed I had a need for a shoe in the “stability” category, as I had a little bit of ankle bend after my heels hit the ground. it was rather eerie to see this view of your feet!

Jeremy was very helpful in explaiining this, and brought out 3 pairs of shoes to try out. Both a Nike and a Reebok shoe felt immediately comfortable (the third one was tight across the front), and I could not really decided between them– so I resorted to a complicated decision algorithm… since I had worn plenty of Nike shoes over the years (mostly court shoes), I decided to try something different and got the Reebok Premier Road Plus.

Well, that is more than enough info on my shoes! But I needed them badly, I was running in some ones that I had used last year for both half marathons.

Next up is Saturday, 6 miles in the mountains!

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