Good news and excellent customer service

[Tomas]

Last week I had some knee pain, so from Saturday week ago till yesterday I didn't go running. But it felt like the knee was getting better, so today I finally went out for a run. Somewhat nervous about whether 10 days rest would have made me unfit, and also nervous about whether I should have waited longer before starting to run again. But there is only one way to find out...

I went to get new running shoes Sunday, thinking that they might have had something to do with my pains. And sure enough, it seems that I pronate slightly on the left foot, and that pronation can result in shin splints and pains in the muscle that was hurting me. I haven't had serious shin splints, but my shins has been hurting regularly while running.

So the reason for the injury might be the pronation, or it might be that I had increased the duration of my runs far to quickly. I'll probably never know, and it doesn't really matter either. But to keep it "safe", I decided that for this week I'll be happy if I can do 30 minutes.

It was definitely hard to get the legs moving again, and I felt more out of breath than before the 10 days rest. But... and that's a but I can only be happy with, towards the end of the run, my Garmin told me that I had run 5k in 29 minutes. Wow, that's my personal best! First time I've been below that 30 minute goal (sorry Renka), so I decided to stuff the 30 minute and just walk home.

So the good news is that my knees were carrying me all the way, and they don't hurt at all (famous last words!). Yay!

And then to the other bit of news. When I went shopping on Sunday, I went to my local Go Outdoors where they've got one of those treadmills with a video camera so they can do gait analysis. A very pleasant chap had me running for about a minute, and then explained the video to me and made the conclusion about pronation. He then went on to say that they had only one pair of running shoes built to correct for that, but that pretty much all Asics would be good for me, and that there is an Asics outlet store in an outlet centre a few miles away. How's that for service? No hard sell, no pushiness, just "this is what you need, we can help you, but if you want to shop around then that's probably where you should go to do so". I thought it was brilliant!

So I bought some camping stuff I needed anyway, and went to the outlet store for my brand new fancy shoes. £72. It sounds like quite a bit to me for a pair of trainers, but if they can keep me running without pains, then it's a price well worth paying!

Happy running all,

Tomas

[ju-ju- Graduate]

That's fantastic your new shoes have given you power boosters!! Well done on your PB and I totally agree about gait analysis, I over pronate too....

[paul2014 Graduate]

Great, positive post and great news on your PB and happy new running shoes

[notbad Graduate]

It's good when that happens, I over-pronate too and the guy who did the gait analysis recommended some orthotics as my trainers were still in good nick, they did the trick and were better than forking out for new shoes. Service like this guarantees return custom. Well done on getting your target time!