New shoes

I bought some new trainers about a month ago, but because I'm fastidious about footwear, I hadn't worn them at all. I don't like to wear new shoes, because I'm worried that I'll get them dirty. As a result, it's often months that they'll sit unused, until my embarrassment at my irrationality overcomes my foibles, and I put them on. So in this case, a month isn't actually that bad; there's a pair of smart shoes I bought in Oxford in February which I haven't worn yet.

These new shoes are a bit lighter than my usual trainers, which should translate into going faster, except they weigh less because they have less padding, so each stride costs you a little more in pain and suffering. There's never a free ride when you're running. There's also no point in being able to run 1 kilometre five seconds faster, if you're then unable to run the other 20 kilometres you were intending.

However, thus far they've been ok. Despite being knackered from yesterday's big run, I was faster over 6km than on last Monday. Although that might have been because of the foot massage, or because I did my route in reverse, or because I was running in the evening instead of the morning. I'm still no closer to my double-blind test. Perhaps I should put different shoes on my left and right feet and see what happens.

Or perhaps I'll just be running in circles.

Smaller circles.

I got home, remarkably unsweaty, and read some more of Roald Dahl's biography (which is good, too good - I keep avoiding rehearsal for tomorrow and reading the book instead) and then took myself off to bed early: I have an early phone call tomorrow, which requires me to leave the house early, which means an earlier run, which means no staying up all night dicking around on the Xbox. The headbone is indeed connected to the thighbone, and all of that.

I now have three pairs of shoes in rotation. This may lead to all sorts of confusion and indecision on the night of my race, but there's still over a month to go until then...