Happy feet

New running shoes, again. On the advice of my chiropractor, who is also a distance runner and seems to really know his stuff, I bought myself some shoes with ultimate stability and cushioning for over-pronation. (I got them off eBay so they were actually cheaper than the basic shoes I bought last spring, so that's something.)

I'm not a gross over-pronator when you look at my feet and my gait. But for whatever reason my hip problems seem to be very sensitive to slight over-pronation. The hope was that really serious stability shoes might help my hip.

I've been running again since a bone scan earlier this month ruled out a stress fracture or anything else sinister that I could wreck by running through a bit of pain. So after almost two months off I started out with walk / run intervals three weeks ago. Sometimes I ran in my old worn-out Asics shoes. Sometimes I ran in my newer Nikes. My hip only got a little worse after each walk/run, then got enough better over the next four days that I could run again.

Then I got the new shoes this week.

Now I run and my hip doesn't get worse. And it has continued to improve gradually between runs. For the first time since the end of August I no longer feel like crying when I think about running. I actually believe now that things are going to improve for good. I've gained back 5 of the 20 pounds I lost. Not that that's a problem -- I like this weight better on balance. But I can feel that my muscles need a bit of retraining. So I'm doing easy runs, a maximum 6 km and no faster than the 10-minute miles I was running in May. I don't want to jinx it and say these things are magic bullets for me, but right now I sure feel that way.