Today I did some crying.

Let me back up a little. Last week was rough on my running. Rough as in I ran a whole 12 miles.  I was a bit sick, and I've been dealing with some foot pain. The ball of my left foot has been very sore. This has been happening on and off for a few weeks now. This week it just seemed worse than before. In an attempt to get answers I went to a local running store and left just as confused as before. Basically, I still didn't know if it was my shoes or not. I took a few days off and felt much better this morning. As soon as I put my running shoes on my foot instantly was sore in that one spot. I ran anyway and regretted it for the rest of the day. You can see my profession of my love for my Brooks PureFlows here. After today I assumed the pain was caused by my shoe and took myself to another running store for more help. This time went a bit better, the guy was pretty certain that my shoes were just worn out. I was shocked because they only had 275 to 300 miles on them. I know that's about how long they're supposed to last, but my first and second pair of PureFlows had many more miles than that on them before they were replaced and I never had any pain.

I let him show me some different shoes, I really love the PureFlows but just can't justify having to replace them so often, but I didn't really love any of them. I left bummed which quickly turned into a crying fit when I told Paul about my new shoes that were already worn out. I was so sad because shoes are expensive and I definitely can't afford to replace mine every couple of months. And we're getting ready to go to DC and I had all these big plans to run all over the place. I couldn't do that if my shoes were hurting my feet so badly. Paul must have felt sorry for me because he told me to just buy new shoes. After doing some research (I started a few days ago) I decided to try something new in the hopes of finding something that will last longer. I decided on the Altra Torin. Altra shoes are appealing to me because they are zero drop which means the heel and forefoot are the same distance from the ground. This allows for a more natural foot strike. They also have a foot shaped toe box, it's wider and more roomy than traditional shoes. It allows your toes to spread out in the shoe which in turn allows the foot to maintain proper anatomical position. These features are supposed to prevent forefoot pain (ding, ding, ding), excessive pronation, IT band injury, runner's knee and shin splints. Altra makes a few different shoe options, I went with the one with lots of cushioning. They felt really good on my feet and are still really light weight. I haven't run in them yet, I'm hoping to do a short treadmill run tomorrow to test them out, but I'm hopeful that I'll like them. Only time will tell I guess.

I did try on some other shoes but I just don't like the feel of the traditional running shoe with the big wedge of a heel. So, keep your fingers crossed that the Torin works out for me. They aren't the most attractive shoe I've ever seen, but I don't really care at this point.