I weighed my running shoes last night. I weighed the right shoe of each different pair, and came up with weights from 13.7 oz to 15.2 oz. The lightest was a Nike Air Alvord trail running shoe, and the heaviest was another pair of trail running shoes: Nike Air Max Assail’s. My non-trail running shoes Nike Air Pegasus and Nike Air N-Sights came in the middle. I have read that over distance, the weight of the shoes I am not sure how much of an affect this small weight difference would make. I am sure it would make some difference. Imagine taking two pound weights, and attached them to each ankle and then trying to run. That is 32 ounces each. It would be tough.
Some runners run barefoot, but then they have wear and tear on the bottom of the feet. What abouts shoes with no cushion. There is probably middle ground where you get the most cushion for the least amount of weight. Not sure what that would be.
Last Friday the company I work for had a celebration for being one of the top 100 information technology companies to work for. So we had a big lunch thing followed about a whiffle ball tournament. There were six teams made up from different departments. When they were asking for people to sign up, I was right in there. I was excited to get out there and play.
The tournament was just for fun, but people got very competitive anyway. Each game was 2 innings. Each team had 10 players. There were no strikes out, and outs were not counted. All 100 players would bat each inning. I was first in the batting order, and I played 1st base. Our team actually had 20 people, but they would switch the 10 people out each inning.
Playing first base was a lot of fun, and I got a lot of action there. When it was time to bat, I purposely hit it short, and ran to 1st expecting to be fast enough to get there. I was. I also was the first player of our team to score a run.
The first game was tied after 2 innings, so we played another half inning with 5 batters in the each line up. We won.
The temperature was around 90, and we were baking in the sun. They would bring out water for us, but it was gone in now time.
I don’t remember much of the second game, but we won that too. Then were playing for the championship. The other team batted first, and I was in the field. We held their runs down. Then we were up to bat. I wasn’t in the batting line up for the first inning. But we scored some runs. Then the other team was up. They didn’t manage to score enough runs to egt ahead, so I never got up to bat that game. We won!
I ended up getting a little sunburned as I wasn’t expecting to be out there that long. But we all had a lot of fun anyway!
I have been due to buy some new shoes. I have been watching the sales ads for the local sporting goods store. For the most part, I buy the cheapest running shoes I can find, but I favor Nike. The last few pairs of shoes I have bought were Nike trail running shoes. But this week, they had some New Balance 429 running shoes on sale for $39.98. They are regularly $59.99. Thats a great discount. They also have some Saucony Grid Cohesion shoes (which I am not familiar with), and some Adidas Uraha shoes on sale for the same price. I decided to try the New Balance shoes. So I stopped in at lunch, and asked about the New Balance shoes. He pointed me to a display rack. The shoes were already out. So I grabbed a box of size 12′s, and tried em on. They felt okay. I ran around a little bit. The heel felt a little stiff. I asked about the Nike N’Sight’s that were on sale for $49.99, and pointed to the sale flyer. He said those were women’s. I pointed to where it said Women’s or Men’s. He said the men’s were a different color. I said that’s okay. He point to the shoe display and said they were orange. I said that was okay. I wanted to see how they felt. He brought out a box of the Nike N’Sight II’s, and I tried them on. I ran around the little track they have in the store, and the shoes felt like they had much better cushioning than the New Balance 429′s. The Nike’s were $10 more than the New Balances but that was okay. They felt much better. I had a coupong for $10 off of a purchase of $50 or $20 for a purchase of $100. So I asked him for another pair of the size 12′s. He brought them out. I had only planned to buy one pair, but the shoes felt really good, so I decided to get a 2nd pair while they were on sale. Also I had the coupon. The total cost of the two pairs of shoes with tax was $83.16. I saved $40!!!! Nice!!!!
I signed up for the Oak Tree Half Marathon on September 2nd in Geneseo, NY. I debated about it. I have the Rochester Marathon two weeks later on September 16th. But I was scheduled to run 10 miles on Saturday (September 1st) at a 9:30 pace. So I am going to switch that to a rest day, and run the half marathon as a training run. I am planning on running it at a 9:30 pace. Actually I might bump the pace up just a hair so that I come in under 2 hours.
Besides being a training run, I am going to use it as an opportunity to practice running with my new Garmin Forerunner 305. I want to use it to set the pace, and have it tell me if I am ahead of pace, or behind pace, etc. It has a neat feature called the Virtual Training Partner that I think will work well.
One concern is that at a glance of the route on TopoRoute.com, the half marathon route looks a little hillier than I was expecting. But the hills might be very gradual in reality. I am planning on taking my time anyway. It will be fun. And hopefully I am one of the first 200 people to register and will get a tech shirt.