Beautiful feet need beautiful shoes

Ok, so I have been thinking of writing this entry for a while. My feet are hardly beautiful. In the past year everytime I have had a running specialist, a physical therapist or an ortho have a look at them, they have pretty much all unanimously said the same words - Your arch has collapsed. This is not an exaggeration - it really has. Because of the anatomy of my flat feet some things are inevitable. I severely overpronate which means that my foot really really roles inward everytime it strikes the ground. This makes having good motion control shoes with insoles an absolute necessity.

I have been able to find two pairs that are fairly comfortable.

This new balance shoe looks and feels like a brick, its huge. But for the issues I have it works. The one problem I have had with this pair is that my left heel does not feel very snug. To rectify this, I use an extra insole along with superfeet.

This is the Brooks Ariel - a really good shoe. I have run my longest run wearing these and they provide unbelievable support.

Both of these run around $100. Who says running is a cheap sport!?!:) I am still not sure which one I'll be wearing for my event. I will decide after my second 14+ mile run.

Pushing the envelop....*

The phrase 'pushing the envelop'* is such a cliche isn't it? But I will shamelessly use it for this blog entry because it is so appropriate. Although my experience this weekend does not compare at all to what pilots and astronauts go through while in space, I really did go past all of my limits and thresholds. Thinking about this run two days later is exhausting. Here is why:

Distance, Distance, Distance!!! - all 14 miles of it

After the hilly stanford dish run, I felt like I had conquered the world. But this was something else. We ran on the Bay Trail that starts from the Oracle campus, goes under the San Mateo bridge and more. I ran with Jamie and we were both very comfortable on our way in. I thought I would only increase 2 miles, but felt good at the 12 mile turnaround, so sort of convinced Jamie to go the whole way, which he did. We turned around and had a nice stop at around 9 miles. From here on things got really difficult! Gu, food, stretching - all were comforting for a few minutes only.

We finally made it to the 12 mile rest station where Captain Randy reminded us that it was all really a mental game and that we were only a good treadmill workout away from the finish line. At 13 miles, Ed met us and ran all the way to the end - 14 miles. We had been running for almost 3.5 hours at this point.

So a recap:

* I have completed my half marathon distance as part of this training. The question is whether I can do more. I would love to improve my time instead.

* This is really hard - my muscles ached all weekend, although right now I feel fine.

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* http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pus1.htm