30 mins: 3.5 km

[liv]

Ran along the Cam at lunchtime today. I see what rmc28 means about it being too hot for running; I found it very hard to motivate myself to keep going even though there was nothing wrong with my legs or lungs. I just got gradually slower and slower through the 30 minutes, but eventually made what for me is a respectable time of 3.5 km in that time.

I left my leggings in Stoke when I packed in a hurry, so I finally got round to getting a second pair of running leggings I can keep in Cambridge. We went to Advance performance, who were very very helpful at doing a gait analysis for me and jack (much more high tech than the one I had done previously) and helping us to choose specialist running shoes. They were pretty unhelpful about not having any clothes over a women's size 16 or a men's size XL, too small for both of us. I appreciate that the typical physique of elite runners is wiry, but even serious athletes could very easily be running as fitness training for some other sport, so they really ought to cater to people with substantial legs! For my part I've found that my thighs have got broader, not thinner, since I took up running, and I've always had big hips and a big bottom, so a size 16 is uncomfortably tight for me. I ended up buying something in high-tech fabric like running tights, in a sort of "capri" style, which are supposed to be loose and flowing and actually just barely fit me. They seem ok for running, definitely better than running in a skirt which would allow my thighs to chafe, anyway.

Comments

[rmc28]

Yay running anyway!

I hope you like your new shoes - Advance Performance are where I got mine in December and I'm still very pleased with them.

Running regularly seems to make my thighs wider and my waist narrower. This means trousers start to fall down, but are held up by the thighs. (But a belt is better.) When I stop running regularly (e.g. after breaking a toe) this sadly reverses a bit. It's been a bit of a comedy finding which trousers currently fit / need a belt / are too tight round the waist / are too tight in the legs.

Basically clothes are hard and I don't want to buy any new ones for a while until my body decides what it's doing.

[jack]

FWIW, I think men's XL was large enough, but I ideally needed XL with short legs, or XL waist with M or L calves, not trousers made for "someone with an ultra-runner's physique, but scaled up 20% in every dimension" :)

[liv]

Will post a shoe review when I've run in the new pair a bit. I'm optimistic about them, apparently they're made from the same mould as my older pair but with less built-up support as the salesman reckoned my gait is much less deviated than it was a couple of years ago.

I so hear you about clothes being hard. Running has definitely made my waist narrower, and it was kind of narrow anyway especially in proportion to the rest of me. So now basically all clothes I can fit into at all gape at the waist. And yeah, it makes lots of sense not to buy new clothes if your figure isn't stable, bad enough if you're a shape that clothing manufacturers don't believe in.

[liv]

Fair enough. I glossed over the details of the ways they didn't have clothes in your size, but I also found their attitude unhelpful, in addition to not having a wide enough range of clothes available.

[jack]

*hugs* Sorry, I didn't mean to criticise. I wasn't there when they were showing you clothes, what did they say? They didn't say anything specific I found objectionable, but I just assumed they would have the clothes on the rack and there was no point asking them about it even if I thought the selection was unhelpful.

In retrospect, perhaps I should start acting as if I actually believed what I say, that "only making clothes no-one can fit in" is manufacturers' fault, not customers fault.