Diary of a New Runner

July 2015

I was looking for an activity to replace my regular attendance at an exercise class and so decided to take up running. I worked out that it had been almost 30 years since I’d last ran, so it had to be a case of building up slowly. At first it was a mix of short runs interspersed with walking this allowing time to recover, and then gradually exchanging this pattern so that runs became longer with less walking in-between. These running bursts, though just a minute or so in length, I found surprisingly tough to do.

My outlay to undertake the activity was minimal at first, so, as it was the midst of summer, I ran in running vests and joggers and I’d alternate the wearing of light weight trainers that had once served me fine for my Zumba workouts. I was running around a man-made lake which was quite exposed on a hot day and I’d be doing a circuit and a bit. I was experiencing various skeletal and muscular aches and pains around the calves and the heel areas particularly because of the feet pounding on the hardcore surface.



August 2015


A few weeks in and my running buddy and I tried a bit of cross county. We found the changes in the terrain a welcome diversion from spending times thinking about breathing techniques and the mental strain of pinpointing markers along a course we had become familiar with. Up to this stage I had been running/walking just once a week, occasionally twice a week, for around 20 minutes each time.


September/October 2015


Therefore, having had a gentle introduction to running, it was at a crucial time when certain benefits from having the regular exercise were becoming obvious and we began upping our game that I suffered an ankle sprain, which was a real set back. It took two weeks or so for the swelling to go down and three weeks of wearing an ankle support.


It was evident to me that my injury had not been the result of an ankle twist on uneven surface or anything like that, it was down to the fact I had not been wearing training shoes designed for running and my bones and the muscles around the ankles had been bearing the brunt of hard impacting. I was in quite a state, forced to limp when walking. Rightly or wrongly I continued to run with the injury as I did not want to drop off with the body conditioning, so during this set back we chose a grassy playing field to run on and we just ran round and round the perimeter. I was worried that I may have to give up running before I had really started!

October/November 2015

I must say these AirZoom Pegaus 32 Flash by Nike for women (see above) has not only allowed the opportunity to continue running before the injury was completely healed, but now it is completely better, and now I am running over a longer time and distance, these training shoes have honestly provided both the necessary cushioning and support so that now I do not even have to think about painful feet and joints, I can just pull them on and start running!

Also, my male partner, who is currently running in a pair of Men's Nike Lunarglide 7 Flash trainers agrees, that now that the seasons have changed, various locations we choose to run can be a bit muddy, and where we would surely be getting wet feet running through the grass and puddles wearing our 'wrong' trainers, both these Nike running versions have a special weather-resistant fabric which repels water and mud and are easy to clean with a bit of wet wiping.

I cannot stress enough how much I feel more 'effervescent' being better equipped for running, not just in regard to the footwear but having made further running gear purchases which has helped with coping with the various extremes.

Watch this space for running diary update in the near future!