Weather - 28 degrees, clouds. Eventful running day. In the early afternoon I went to Body N Sole to buy some new running shoes. I recently realized that my current pair of Asics Kayano is way past the expiration date, they probably have 700 miles or more of wear. Also, they have always seemed too clunky, heavy, and without enough cushion. Why I did not replace them months ago shows how stubborn and illogical (stupid) I can be. I ended up buying two pair of shoes today , Nike Structure Triax 11 and Asics 2120. I wore the Nike on my run today, I could not believe how good they felt, the cushion put a smile on my face, and I may have just solved my achilles tendonitis problem. For the past 2 months my achilles has felt tight at the beginning of each run, and only loosens after 1-2 miles. I am not sure why I did not think the shoe was causing the problem, my guess was that it was because I was running everyday, and it was a weak link that had to be tolerated. On my run today the achilles loosened within the first 10 steps, and felt healthy throughout the run. It is hard to believe changing shoes can have that big of an impact, but the Kayanos may have been the cause of the problem. I won't know for sure until I take more runs in the Nike shoes. It would be a relief if the cure was this easy. For my run I jogged 3.5 miles to Michelle's apartment and then we went to her exercise room which has 3 treadmills. I have never run on a treadmill before, so I thought I would give it a try. Michelle taught me the basic functions, and then we started running. I found it to be easier than normal running, so I cranked it to 10 level and according to the controls I was running 6:00 minutes per mile. I laughed at that, there is no way I can currently hold a 6:00 pace. I then decided that if I put some elevation into the run it would make it more challenging. I cranked it to grade 12 and watched the machine lift, by the time it stopped moving I felt like I was running up the side of a mountain, so I lowered it to grade 9, and set the speed at 8, and this caused me to sweat. I eventually settled in at grade 2 with 8.5 speed, this seemed to equate my normal running effort. After 4 miles we stopped and chatted as we did a cool down walk. #104 z.m. - #18 | 