Tuesday, March 06, 2007

What are my feet doing?


I'm posting a picture of my feet taken during the run of my second triathlon. It's a bit embarrassing to post the rest- maybe a future event when I've lost another 20 pounds or so. At first I was surprised when I saw the picture at how the outside of my heel was going to hit before the rest of my foot. Then I thought about the wear pattern on pretty much all my shoes, and that's how I walk and run all the time. I've never had good luck with my feet, shoes and running. I wear size 11 narrow (I measure about a AA, or B at the widest), which are hard to find in general. The only brand I wear is Nike because they tend to be the most narrow, but my toes still slide around too much up front and I'm always getting blisters. I don't know whether I need a stability shoe, a cushion shoe or what. And what is it called that I'm doing, is that over-pronating or rotating or something? I just know nothing. I usually buy myself a new pair of shoes in April, but I think this year I'll hold off until after the summer and buy myself a new pair for my "welcome back to training" when maternity leave is over. The funny part about feet is that HotWheels wears the same pattern into all his shoes- the outside heel is the first thing to wear out. He did not inherit my foot shape, however, I've always joked that Paul has Barney Rubble feet because they're so wide they're practically square. HotWheels inherited his foot shape, Superman's got my foot shape. He wears almost the same size as his brother whose almost 2 years older. I hope they inherited Dad's athletic ability, though, and not mine.
Another really good workout this morning. I ran a 10 minute mile and then ran/walked another 2 miles for a total of 3 miles in 35:32. I walked another 10 minute cooldown. I wasn't moving much better than that when I wasn't 17 weeks pregnant, so I'm happy with it. The hard part is monitoring my heart rate. In the past I know the recommendation was that pregnant women shouldn't let their heartrate go above 140 beats per minute during exercise. I think I can crawl my heartrate up to 140 bpm, that's barely a workout for me. I'm fortunate that most guidelines now say that as long as you're rate of perceived exertion isn't too high, it should be fine. The first mile I felt good and relaxed, I hit 165 bpm about 8:30 into the mile and by 10:00 I was hovering at 169- I've decided for me that 170 is where I back off. I was ready to walk then anyway, so I walked for 2 minutes and it was back down to 130, after that, every run interval shot my heartrate up to 165 within a minute and a half, so I spent most of the time doing 2 minute run-walk intervals. It doesn't worry me too much that it goes up because it does go back down within a couple minutes. Five minutes after I got off the treadmill it was back under 100, which the trainers have always told me is a good sign- when you recover quickly. I AM going to the pool tomorrow, I'm looking forward to trying out my new paddles.

Day 2 and the food tracking is going well. I was at about 1800 calories both yesterday and today. The babyfit website recommends 2000-2300 per day for me but I think that's a bit high since I was at about 1500 a day when I wasn't pregnant and that's where I could maintain my weight. The extra 300 a day isn't really necessary yet, I guess, since critter's only about 5 ounces right now, but the extra's been mangoes and blueberries for the past couple days, so those are good calories, right? Go with me on this.

Pregnancy status: 17 weeks, 2 days; 159 days to go.

2 comments:

Triteacher said...

So, is that the name you're going with - critter? How cute! ;)

My feet do the same thing to my shoes. I'm a Nike girl too. I've tried them all, but always come back to that narrow fit.

Unknown said...

I'm the exact opposite of you, no length, all width. But I do have the same difficulties getting shoes to fit. With regular shoes I've gotten used to having extra length to make up for width, but that's not so good with running shoes.

Why not another "superhero" name for the upcoming baby?