It’s been an interesting week, running wise. It started off with the first run for six days on Monday. It wasn’t very good, my ankles and calves hurt. My knees started protesting after the event, and it just all felt very wrong. I tweeted about it and got a few good responses with ideas of what it could be - a lack of practice, the requirement for new shoes, the cold weather. I suspect that first run may have been a mixture of all three.

However, the second run on Wednesday was equally painful and I knew it was time to purchase some new shoes. Considering how long I’ve been running on them, it’s a wonder that I haven’t had any problems before. I managed to pick up some new trainers on Thursday, and rearranged my schedule so I could try them out on Friday.

SO!

With new shoes, it was much better, the pains were completely gone, but my thigh muscles felt quite strained. That does happen occasionally, but I thought in this instance I might have been overcompensating the previous two runs and the muscles needed some time to unwind.

I remember when I got brand new trainers for the very first time, and all I could think about was how bouncy they were. This time was no different and I felt awesome walking out for that run on Friday. I could feel that there was a certain bit of my foot that was going to blister, and it did, but other than that, they were pretty good.

The weather was finally on board this weekend, and I got to go back to my route. I was hoping to extend the distance, ignoring speed, but as I was still getting used to the new shoes, I stuck to the normal 5k.

The graph is ridiculous. I’ve been battling the GPS for my weekday runs and Gavin suggested the iSmoothRun app as an alternative to the Runkeeper one. I gave it a go, and it’s really good. It has space for a lot more information, and makes use of the accelerometer. But, whilst the app read the above figures, when I exported it to Runkeeper, it read a totally different distance. I wasn’t sure which one was right, but I’ve manipulated the graph in Runkeeper to reflect what the app says. I’m not convinced. I think I’ll stick to the Runkeeper app just for the sake of them both at least reading the same.