So after the road trip yesterday to buy shoes I had some new shoes to test out tonight!
I missed out on a planned 8 miler last night because of the road trip (although I did manage to get in 2.66 miles yesterday morning around the hotel, Grand Forks residential areas – lovely area actually – very clean and well maintained) so I wanted to do 8 tonight to get that run back. I also wanted to test out the Nike Structure 17s I picked up to try to see if their added support and slight over pronation correction properties would help to sort out my knee issues that I have been having lately. I figured if I had an issue with them I would quickly switch over to my trusty Pegasus 30s and finish out the run.
Most of my knee issues seem to be happening when I am pushing fairly fast and hard so I didn’t want to go too slow with these new shoes and not give them a proper test. That and around 8-9 hours of driving combined with slow shopping walking I really wanted to stretch my legs.
So before supper (and after about an hour and a half in the pool with the kids and my brother), I hit the treadmill to see what the Structures could do.
I started out with a steady 7.5 mph for a minute to give a quick test, since things felt good I bumped things up to 9 mph for a minute and things still felt good. So I went back to 7.5 for another minute and then 2 minutes at 9 mph. Because things were feeling good I kept bumping my speed while still doing the slower speed / faster speed intervals. I upped the slower speed to 8 mph for the rest of the run and slowly upped the faster speed every cycle until I was at 10 mph. I walked for a minute at the half hour mark and then kept pushing. I did slow down the faster speed for a few cycles and then brought it back up and then back down again. Then finished the hour with a cycle with the fast at 10 mph.
That felt really good – 8.85 miles in one hour at a 1% incline with a 1 minute walk break half way through.
So the Structures have passed the first test – they definitely didn’t cause any new issues on a significantly fast run.
There were some minor knee pain issues but not as bad as I have been having but it is probably too early to say that these shoes are the reason why the issues were less than they had been. It could be one or more of a few reasons:
- the new shoes
- I was paying more attention to my form because I was conscious that there could be issues with the new shoes
- the bit of break from running due to the road trip
- all the walking around in stores over the past couple days stretching out the legs
- I was in the pool just before the run so legs could have been loosened up well because of that
Either way I am fairly positive about these shoes and can’t wait to see how they perform as I move forward!
Additionally this could very well have been my fastest hour of running ever – I have had the feeling lately that I was holding back because I didn’t want to hurt my knee and risk another hamstring problem. Testing the new shoes gave me the confidence and the drive to push harder and that really showed in the run tonight. I need to capture that and keep driving!!
I am writing this about 3 hours after I finished the run and still feel awesome – whoohooo!!!
Leave a Reply