My Superfeet insole did wonders.

Wednesday night, it was hot…like…unreasonably hot. Like there was a severe weather warning for excessive heat hot. 113 degree heat index. I felt like my lungs were cooking when I walked outside.

Needless to say, I decided that since the weather service was issuing an “Extreme Heat Warning”, I probably shouldn’t run outside.

Instead, I took my run inside to the treadmill in my den…which would also be the first run with my Superfeet insoles.

Wednesday night’s run was supposed to be two 12 minute runs with a 1 minute walk between. My goal, on the other hand, was simply to try to get through the Monday night workout that I had been unable to do…

So I turned on Pawn Stars and turned on the treadmill…

When I kicked into a run, however, I was kicking it. Like really, really kicking it. After about a minute, I started thinking, “Hey, I can do this all day!” Yeah, I was running slower than molasses (3 MPH), but I was running…and doing quite well. At 8 minutes – when I was supposed to switch to a walk – I felt good, so I figured…hell, why not do today’s workout…so I started gunning for 12 minutes.

The 12 minute mark rolled around. I still felt good…like really good. Like…do I really want to switch to a walk good…so I didn’t. I figured I’d try to run to 20 minutes. The 20 minute mark rolled around…I still felt good. So I figured I’d run to the 25 minute mark (which is where the original workout would have ended).

At this point, I realize that I’ve covered 1.25 miles…you know what? Let’s push for 2…and a half episode of Pawn Stars later…I was there. In fact, the only thing that actually stopped me from trying to run a full 5k on the treadmill was the mind shearing boredom.

Now, I recognize that running on the treadmill is a bit easier than running on the road. You have the belt moving with you and you’re able to maintain a constant, comfortable pace…and I had no incline. However, at no point did I think that I would ever run 2 miles in any setting.

Maybe it was just a really, really good day.

So I tried again on Thursday…this time, just running a mile to see if it would be easy.

Not only was it easy…I was able to bump the treadmill up to 4 MPH towards the end of my run. I ran a negative split…albeit an extremely slow negative split.

I can’t believe it…but I think I can actually do this.

Tomorrow, I hit the actual road…it’s the greenway trail…we’re doing 2.5 miles…and honestly…I think I can do it.

This is why I’m not running outside today. We have a “dangerous heat index”.

It was a long weekend from Saturday to Monday…and I experienced the entire spectrum of running emotions…

On Saturday, my friend Kim and I went to the Yazoo Brewery – a local Nashville brewer – to run in a 4k that had been put together rather spontaneously. We showed up at around 6:30am for the 7am race and it started pouring…they brought us all inside to wait out the rain, but the race still got off on time.

My first bit of hesitation was when we showed up and there were only about 50 runners there…and they were all runners…no “beginners” such as myself, despite the fact that this was an untimed, noncompetitive 5k run on sidewalks. The good news is that I ran for quite a bit on my first run (for me) – looking at MapMyRun.com, I figured that I ran about .65 miles before I started walking. Unfortunately, by this time, I had virtually lost touch with anyone in the pack. After walking for another quarter mile, I realized that I had no idea where the race had gone…and since the course wasn’t marked, I had no idea where to go. Yeah, right?

At that point, I just turned around and went back the way I came. I did run another quarter mile or so before I noticed the rest of the pack coming around a corner back to where I was. I definitely didn’t run the correct route…but I did run some, although I didn’t feel fantastic about it.

The fun part was that they served everyone beer after the race…there’s nothing like having a hefeweizen at 7:30 in the morning and not feeling like you have some sort of problem…the race itself was a little eye opening, though, because I could run so little of it. I attributed part of that (hopefully) to the track day on Thursday…and I’d find out on Monday what else I could attribute that to.

Fast forward to Sunday, we found the Under Armour outlet in Dawsonville, Georgia (we went to the Braves game on Saturday) and I snagged a bunch of good gear – a visor (because while I always wear hats, they get really, really hot…and I’m not ready to commit to a headband), a pullover for the fall, some wicking underwear (you’ll know), and an extremely yellow shirt that’s made out of recycled bottles and has a 50+ UV protection. Needless to say, I wore most of it on my run on Monday.

Considering the fact that I wasn’t able to do more than a half mile on Saturday, I wasn’t expecting much from Monday’s run. We’re in the 7th week of the program and the first run is three 8 minute runs with 1 minute walks in between. Considering how things have gone so far, I figured I’d get through the first one as best I could and go from there. “From there” ended up being all the way through the second one and three-quarters of the way through the third one (I had to pause for a 2 minute walk). That was a bit surprising…only walking a minute in between really didn’t ease much of any pain…so it was basically like running for 24 minutes straight. Also, while the rest of the group went up the hill on the hill route, we decided that it was better to completely the intervals than to quit on the hill, so we turned around and worked for the 8 minutes…I feel like that was a better decision.

When we returned, there was a local physical therapy office doing injury screenings, so I decided to have them check out my shin splints…lo and behold, I find out that I have “extremely” flat feet. My foot is turning at such an angle when I run that it is putting what he said was a “tremendous” amount of stress on the muscle in front of my shin when I ran…and that I’d need a running orthotic, such as Superfeet, which I could get fitted for at a local running store.

Well, smart guy that I am, I remembered Superfeet from when I was trying to learn to ice skate…and I knew REI sold them…so I stopped in on the way home and talked with the sales person for a moment. She said that I needed to buy the blue ones because they were designed for running shoes, so that’s what I got – for $34.95 (considering when he said “orthotics”, I immediately had $500 transactions running through my head, this was quite a relief). When I got home and got ready to trim them down to size, I realized I didn’t need to…they fit perfectly in my shoe…

So now I look forward to seeing how tomorrow’s run goes with the Superfeet.