The first time I went out for a run in the new shoes, I noticed that my sock under the ball of my left foot seemed to be bunched up. It wasn't. It was the shoe putting more pressure on that area of my foot. Hmmm. I deducted that my old shoes were worn badly in that area, creating a low spot in the shoe. The new shoes must be putting my foot back in the correct position, but my foot wasn't happy about that.
So I thought my feet just needed time to adjust. It was my fault for waiting so long to replace my worn out shoes. The discomfort did seem to get better, but would still come and go.
Saturday I set out on my long run, which has worked up to 16 miles. I noticed the discomfort early in the run. By mile 10, it was bad enough that I wondered if I could even finish the run. So I asked The Lord in my typical way for help. It went something like this: "Lord, Here I am. You know all about this situation. My foot hurts. I sure would appreciate it if you would heal it. But if you don't, I'm o.k. with that. I just want to finish this run, and I want to run the marathon. But that's all me and all about what I want. So I'll leave it at that."
Nothing really changed in the discomfort, but in a few minutes I had a thought. Before I bought the Brooks I was wearing, I had shopped on-line for a pair of shoes just like my old ones. They had been discontinued, a new model had taken their place, and I had found a store that had the old model I had been wearing. But I wanted something new and different, and hadn't gone that route. However, after buying the new shoes, I had gone on my computer and was cleaning up some old bookmarks, including the one for those shoes I had found. When I had clicked on the bookmark, I saw that the shoes were on sale for $40, less than half the price I had paid for them a year or so ago. So I had ordered them, and they were in the back of my closet.
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| The Mizuno Wave Inspire 6 from Rogans Shoes |
This all came back to me at mile 10, so I determined that I would change shoes at the end of mile 11 (I had divided the 16 miles into three legs, each leg coming back to our house.) I made my pit stop, changing shoes (I had to do it myself, as I had no pit crew that day), and set off on the last 5 miles of the run.
Immediately I noticed a drastic difference in the way the shoe cradled my foot. Within the first mile, I could tell that the ball of my foot felt much better. I finished the run, exuberant that I had been given an answer to my petition for pain relief. My best analysis is that the Brooks don't have quite enough support in the arch, and that was creating extra pressure on the ball of my foot. Not a fault of the shoe, just that it isn't suited for my foot.
After a mere 70 miles on the new Brooks, I have retired them to the back of my closet (at least temporarily), and will press on with the $40 pair of Mizuno Wave Inspire 6's. And I will order another pair of them, as they are still available on-line.
There you have it, way more information than anyone would possibly want to know. And I'm not even sure there is a moral to the story, except for the following:
- As hard as we try to do the right thing (such as to buy the best shoes, or a gas range), sometimes it just doesn't pan out the way we expect.
- God does still answer prayer, although the answer may not come the way we expect.
- As to God answering prayer, in this case, He started the process of answering it immediately after I had bought the doomed Brooks shoes. I had the answer in my closet before I even needed it.
- As a matter of fact, there is a moral to this story, as illustrated by the point above. In fact, it is an excellent point, thank you very much.
1 comment:
I just really enjoy the running blogs. Truly enlightening in regards to what it takes to run a marathon.
Appreciate what you think about as you run.
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