Aunt Mary, in her first email about running and such, informs us of an important detail:

You MUST have a decent pair of running shoes.  Go to a GOOD running store and they’ll fit you properly.  It’ll cost about $100.  That’s the only absolute necessity.   Do that asap.

Now, nobody in my house knows what constitutes a “GOOD running store” in the Philadelphia area (or any other area, for that matter), so we do what we always do: trust in the goodness of the internets. Google says Philadelphia Runner is the place for me, so off to 16th and Samson I went.

Now, I have never bought running shoes before.  Really, my primary form of sneaker is, essentially, a bowling shoe, which, of course, has no padding, or arch support, and isn’t even much good for walking if you’re going to be doing a long of it.  I have no idea what I’m looking for.  Thankfully, the girl working there (whose name I really should have gotten, as it makes this little documentary easier to follow) knows her running shoes.

So, I arrive, I take off my bowling shoes (which look sort’ve like the shoes above), roll up the cuffs and take a few steps around under her watchful eye.  By her scouting report, I’ve got small arches (aka “flat feet”), and I tend to walk toward the outside of my foot.  Which means I need…something.  I probably should have asked about that, too.  Anyway, I have a shoe with good arch support now.  Tossing in a couple pairs of socks, and a wildly expensive pair of shorts to run in, and I walked out of with $140 of merchandise–all hopefully well spent.

Behold!  The mighty Brooks Adrenaline GTS 8!  The official shoe of TC, Broad Street Runner in training.

I’m only going to use the shoes to run in, and (again) according to the Tubes, they should be good for about 500 miles, so I’m curious to see how long it takes me to reach that point.

I wasn’t able to actually run today, as after buying the shoes I was stuck in an interminable wait to pay our gas bill, and then I took the Viscount down through South Philly for the Flyers game.  So, no running, but 15-20 miles on the bike to feel good about.

Tomorrow, we run for the first time.  In the meanwhile, we begin the bargaining with God for survival.

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