This past Sunday, I ran for the third consecutive year in the Women's Running Magazine Women's Half Marathon in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Women's Half is the first half-marathon I ever ran, so it is a somewhat sentimental race for me. In the past two years, I'd trained exclusively for this race in the months leading up to it. This year, however, I had trained mainly for the Chicago Marathon, which occurred about six weeks prior to this race. So those six weeks were not terribly focused or dedicated training weeks; they were more like let's-see-what-I-can-pull-out-of-this-body-before-the-race weeks. I did manage to pull out some long runs, and I even improved my pace since the marathon. But having only given my body one week of rest directly after the marathon, I still had some lingering wear and tear that hadn't yet healed. I conversed with a runner-friend about this, and that conversation led me to think that pain is just a fact of running. Something is alw...

When one of the founders of the nonprofit Women Helping Others Succeed (WHOS) came to the Four Green Fields Running Club a couple of weeks ago to announce their upcoming 5k race, my interest was immediately piqued. Aside from being sponsored by a women's charitable organization, the race proceeds would benefit athletes with certain limitations who needed special equipment to participate in races and the like. I thought it was a fitting event for Veterans Day, which I never really know how to honor, as many of these athletes were no doubt veterans who had lost limbs or mobility as a result of combat. As an added bonus, the race was to be held in Hyde Park Village, just blocks from where I live. I hadn't run a 5k race since May, and at that race I'd finished with a personal record (PR) of 27 minutes. That was quite an exciting accomplishment for me, as shorter races (read: fast races) were not my forte. All of my training since then had been for distance races, so I'd...

I did a daring things last week: I switched running shoe brands. I've worn and sworn by Asics since I began seriously running three years ago (which means for me that I've run down three pairs). But something about my last Asics experience didn't sit right with me. Perhaps it was all of the problems I had during marathon training. Or perhaps it was the inserts I used to help one such problem. Or perhaps it was my fault for believing that a more expensive shoe would lead to a better experience. The shoes I bought at the start of training were an upgrade from what I had successfully worn twice before; the kid at the running store did what he was supposed to do--try to upsell--and it worked. (I'm admittedly a sucker for marketing and sales tactics.) But regardless of where the blame lay, my rosy view of Asics was tarnished. So when I went to my local running store a couple weeks after the marathon--a finishing treat I'd goaded myself with throughout training--I stood...