i bring you a break to the covid news to bring you a running update. right about now, i’d be primed and ready to for the earth day half if covid were not a thing, and let me tell you, it’s good news that my half marathon is postponed because my left foot is INJURED.

normally i easily break in a new pair of asics kayanos, the brand’s stability shoe that i’ve been wearing for the past 7 years or so. i skipped a couple iterations because of the toebox, but i’d never had a problem with a heel. until THIS iteration. what.did.you.do.asics. i wore them to work one day and my left heel was sore already, then i decided to run in them. ugh! then i ran some more because i thought well, maybe it’ll shake out. to be fair, at that point i wasn’t sure that it was the shoe that was causing pain. they sure seemed fine when i tried them on right out of the box.

i should know better by now.

and now i haven’t run for more than a week! i went to PT on tuesday, and after looking at the shoes, she thought maybe the arch and heel had torqued my foot somehow, which strained tendons in my foot and is causing stabbing pain along the back bottom of my heel. i also wonder about the heel drop, which seems to be significantly higher than past versions of the kayano.

excellent!

so now i’m in running pause while the tendons reconfigure themselves. and next week’s weather is shaping up to be the best in a while, and i can barely go for a quarter mile walk.

i did write a nastygram to asics to let them know their $160 shoes caused me an injury. there’s about 13 miles on the shoes, so i doubt i can return them (especially with covid), and who knows if that falls under warranty.

in related news, i am trying a different brand of shoes, topo, which has a low heel drop and should have a decent amount of stability as well. we’ll see how those go when they arrive!

in the meantime, i’m using the stationary recumbent bike and will hope for a better foot next week.