Will Runner's World start covering hedge funds now?

Yesterday morning my friend Sedentary Man handed me a section from the Wall Street Journal and said I'd probably want to read this article entitled "We have ways of helping you buy running shoes." I think that was supposed to be a play on the way German officers would threaten torture in old WWII movies. If that was the case the writer missed her mark because the article described four complex but helpful experiences that led to her being fit with the right running shoes. The writer referred to herself with the royal "we" throughout the article which I found odd but, that aside, I thought she did a good job researching the buying process. She visited four running stores, three in the state of Washington and one in NYC. I recently went through this experience at Jackrabbit so I was curious to see how these other stores performed their evaluations.  

Three out of the four stores performed gait analysis using video and a treadmill. A doctor who was quoted in the story said that the video process is "gimmicky" but I disagree with that. Seeing myself pronate in hi-def convinced me that I needed a moderate stability shoe. One store used a pressure sensitive mat that changed color based on weight distribution. A couple of stores had the writer run barefoot on the treadmill. I thought that was weird because most people heel strike but will never do that when running barefoot so what does it prove?

In the end it seemed like each store did a good job of identifying the right shoe for the writer. I was amused to read that she tried on a pair of "Mizunas" and I'm sure the Mizuno people loved reading that!

This morning I considered my choices for my daily workout: run, strength conditioning, another elliptical session or shoveling the newly fallen (and still falling) snow on our driveway. A look out the window confirmed the report of 3"-8" with 5 inches on the ground at 4:00 AM. I decided that my car could blast through that provided I escape before the town plows come by and deposit 20" of hard pack in front of the driveway.

I decided to stay inside and started with the Lolo core exercises that I found in Runner's World last year. I really like them because they only take 15 minutes but you feel like you've accomplished something when you've finished. I followed that with about 20 minutes of hand weights. I only used 5 and 10 pound weights because I wanted to do lots of reps and start a baseline for arm and upper body conditioning. I left for the train before the snowplows came. Standing on the snowy LIRR platform I was happy to see the train come in and I was glad that I started my day with a different but energizing workout.