Week 4 Day 3

Stick a fork in her, folks - Week 4 is done! For today's routine, I added an element of danger: I exercised in my six-year-old New Balance shoes.  These puppies are a little blown out, frayed, and flat.  It was the flat aspect that appealed to me, and since I'm doing either a fore-foot strike or a mid-foot strike I thought it might actually not be too bad of an idea.

I did feel a difference immediately in the warm-up walk.  Being flatter, my calves stretch just a bit more before my trailing foot gets picked up.  But it wasn't really unpleasant.  Before I knew it, the walk was over and it was time to do the jogging.  As I have done all this week, I wiggled at 3.3 mph and jiggled at 4.5 mph.  Actually, I did part of the first run at 5.1 mph by accident.  The shoes didn't feel much different jogging, perhaps not as mushy.

Nothing was too hard for me today, but I wasn't thinking that well.  I found myself evaluating every stinkin' footfall based on how the lower legs felt.  But, every now and then I'd snap out of it and think about the angle between my lower leg and the vertical.  It's funny, I can't do two exercises thinking about the same stuff.  The best part of today's exercise is that wind was never an issue.  My highest heart rate was as high as 165, but breathing felt comfortable.