New Shoes!!

I have been having some serious issues this year with shin splints. I used to get a little sore, but this year it’s been a sharp pain. I have researched them online and spoke to several people about them. I am not getting a consistent answer. The main issue that keeps coming up is that I probably need new shoes.

This past weekend we went to a shoe store geared towards runners that was referred to me by a friend. The name of the store is Road Runner Sports. It’s located north of I-270 near Worthington, Ohio. Inside this store you will find everything related to running from underwear and socks to shorts to sunglasses to heart rate monitors. The reason we wanted to give this one a try over going to a store like Footlocker, is because they do an analysis of your feet and your running gait.

The associate that helped us was Laura. She was very knowledgeable and helpful. We started off by standing on a mat that was hooked up to a computer. This showed where most of our pressure is being placed on our feet and where our center of gravity is. We then got on the treadmill and ran for 45 seconds while being recorded by a video recorder. I didn’t really want to see what I looked like while I run because I’m sure I look like an idiot, but it was from the back of the knee down. Laura ran our runs back to us in slow motion and paused it on each foot to show how our feet landed and how our ankles up to our calf were reacting during our run. Based on that analysis along with asking us some other questions (eg. How long do you run? What kind of surface are you running? etc), she narrowed down the type of shoe that we should be wearing. They also molded custom insoles to put in our shoes to use.

 

Both Julie and I tried on what seemed like 100 pair of running shoes in the ‘category’ that we were recommended and were allowed to run around the store. A lot of the shoes I could not tell a huge difference in, but going from a medium cushion shoe to a high cushion shoe seemed like a big difference to me.

We both purchased new running shoes and the custom insoles to go with them. I cannot tell you if my shin splints are better yet or not because we haven’t had a chance to run in them yet, but I do want to recommend that if you are interested in getting some good running shoes, to check out Road Runner Sports.  If you don't have the time to get to a store, there is also a neat online version of the "prefect fit shoe finder" to try!