"Beast"ly Christmas

Santa was very good to me! 2010 Brooks Beast... Last week I was about 200 miles past the retirement age of my old shoes when I ended up banging up my foot. These couldn't have come down the chimney at a better time. It's painful spending real money on shoes, but much more painful not to! If you're starting to run and you haven't been fitted for shoes, make it happen. In the Knoxville area, we have shops like Runners Market, Fleet Feet, and New Balance. From my experience, you can go in, get fit advice, and get shoe suggestions. From there I prefer to support the local shop and buy my shoes there, but you can take what they tell you about your gait (whether you over pronate, under pronate, or have neutral pronation) and find a pair online, at an outlet store, etc.
Most local running shops have email lists that send out monthly emails with specials. I even won a $20 gift card from New Balance by responding to a monthly email contest. Every little bit helps!

On our Poor Man's Shoe Plan for my wife, we save Coke bottle caps for Coke Rewards Points to get Nike Gift Certificates. Ironically, her last three pairs of running shoes (and Nike+ sensor) have been sponsored by Coca Cola.

The Short Answer

     When people ask why I started running, I have two answers. The short answer, the one I usually give, is the easiest. In the movie Fight Club there's a scene where Edward Norton's character is being held down in a police interrogation room, preparing to have his balls cut off for trying to sabotage Project Mayhem. Threatened with imminent castration, he makes a break for it. The next several minutes of the movie revolve around Norton running away from the police station. As Norton runs, his voice narrates: “I ran. I ran until my muscles burned and my veins pumped battery acid. Then I ran some more.” On maybe my dozenth viewing of the movie, I found myself asking this question: If my NOT being castrated depended on it, could I run five miles without stopping?

     The next day, I made my way to the local 1/3 mile walking track. After fumbling through what I imagined stretching should look like for about a minute, I laced my shoes as tightly as I could and walked to the middle of a straightaway. Unceremoniously, I broke into a sprint. The wind was at my back, my muscles were awake, alive, surging with archetypal energy; a long-dormant memory of chasing a saber-toothed tiger through the tundra or maybe wildly being chased by a saber-toothed tiger. Heading into turn one, less than a tenth of a mile in, I stumbled to a stop, dropped to my knees, rolled to my back, battery acid burning through my veins. They can have my balls, I thought to myself. This isn't worth it. 

     It took about 10 years and a much more complicated reason to run to move from this first run as a two-packs-a-day smoker to running five miles and beyond,  but that's where it starts. 

Not your khakis...

Getting ready for the Warrior Dash--Georgia in May,  the team brainstormed the idea of  giving Fight Club a nod with Team Space Monkey. Sam Graves did some quick shirt mock-ups for us, but we decided to go with another theme. We don't know what it is yet, but we'll see.

T-shirt front

T-shirt back