This week an important lesson was learnt.

Never EVER wear new/different shoes on the day of a race.

I mean it.

If you’ve been following our training, you’ll know that this week was going to be the week we hit the big distance. We decided to forgo the 12.5 mile target and hit the big 13.1, set our first PB and feel super about doing it..

We didn’t. And I’m not going to lie, it was entirely my fault, which I hate.

I have two pairs of trainers that I run in: a pair of Nikes, which I’ve done the majority of my running over the last year or so in, and a pair of Karrimor running shoes which I use on and off, but not very often, so I’ve been trying to use them more recently to wear them in a little more and check their suitability. I wore them for all our runs last week and they were totally fine; a lot more lightweight than my Nikes and slightly more supportive of my feet.

So I figured why not wear them this weekend? We set off bright and early yesterday morning, and totally opposite to our last big distance, the weather was sunny, not much wind and for 7.30/8am, it was super warm, and by super warm I mean sweaty hot. But we continued to run into the heat of the morning sun, keeping a good pace, and hit the 5 mile mark in a record time (for us, obviously) of 57 minutes, which was a great feeling and could only mean good things for the rest of the run..

And then we hit 6 miles, and the blisters formed.. A runner’s nightmare, and all because I wore the wrong shoes. I’d never run more than 4-5 miles in my Karrimors, and the result of going past that point meant I quite literally have blisters upon blisters, in the same place on both feet. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the shoes are bad, I’m just stressing the importance of proper testing of shoes before a big race because I’d hate anyone else to have to give up mid-run, or do any serious damage to their feet.

I’m totally gutted we weren’t able to do it this week, but with plenty of training time to go, its not the end of the world!

°o°