Half-marathon training – Week 3 – Insoles galore

Mondays are a rest day in my training schedule so I thought I’d use them to summarize the previous week’s training…

Week 3 was a good week for training. Wednesday and Saturday are supposed to be cross-training days. On Wednesday I rode the stationary bike and the gym and then played volleyball. On Saturday I was going to go for a swim but I ran 3 miles instead because getting to the pool and back would have taken more time than I had to spare. So my week 3 total was 15 miles.

Last week I learnt how important feet are to running. Early in the week I was having problems with my right foot. Or my freak foot as I like to call it now. I was having periodic shooting pains in my heel. Some days they were they and some days they were gone. I did a little internet research (I know, that’s dangerous when it comes to medical stuff) and I decided to heel inserts might do the trick. So one trip to Target and $6.99 later I had the inserts. The problem is that because the heel inserts are only half length they really need to sit on top of something else so that you’re toes aren’t rubbing against the actual bottom of the shoe. On Saturday I put them on top of the insoles that came with my shoes. The heel pain was instantly gone. The problem was that the inserts pushed my heels up so high I was worried I might step right out of my shoes. So after that run I hit the drug store and got a pair of cheap thin foam insoles. I used these with the heel inserts on Sunday and life was pretty good. Except the heel inserts are giving me blisters. I think I just need to wear them in a little though.

The other training excitement of last week was mapmyrun.com. My roommate pointed me to this site and it is fantastic. You map out a running route using a point and click map and it totals up the distance for you. So useful!