Hurty feet indeed.

When I named this blog "My Feet Hurt!" I did it half jokingly. I was expecting my feet to be a tad sore from all that pavement pounding. I even expected a minor injury, perhaps from putting my foot down funny or slipping on some gravel, all of which I am told are the common perils of running. So when my first foot injury arose on Friday you'd think I'd have been celebrating. I would now be able to proudly show off my battle scars, proof of my dedication to my chosen exercise regime. Not so. I didn't hurt my foot out running. How, you ask, did I injure myself? A slip? A fall? No, no, no. 

My shoe bit me. 

Yes you read that right. Friday night I made my way to the tube station to go to my fiancé's work party, and my shoe bit me. My sensible, flat shoes that I had worn specifically with the aim of preventing foot injury. The sensible shoes I was planning on later swapping for the highly impractical 5 inch heels. My sensible shoes have a funny sense of irony that's all I'm going to say. In all honesty I had noticed a slight pinching sensation on my (5 minute) walk to the station, but I figured I must have just got something stuck in the shoe. Picture my shocked, disbelieving face when I pull the offending shoe off at the station to find my heel completely red with blood. Blood! My sensible shoes made my foot bleed! This is the type of injury I would expect had I decided to run a marathon in my aforementioned 5 inch heels! Or just taken part in an Army-style march across the Brecon Beacons. In the rain. 

My lady readers might understand this sentiment more than my male ones, but you place your trust in your sensible shoes and mine betrayed me. Traitors. 

Anyway, for those of you who like seeing this kind of thing, I have thoughtfully included a photo of my heel. It has healed over somewhat now and is no longer actively bleeding (yay) but still hurts to the point where conventional shoes (ie: anything that's not a welly or a flip flop) are agony to wear. 

Oh, and for those of you (probably not) wondering what happened to my night out? Well I went to the work party anyway, in my pretty knee-length cocktail dress with my handsome dinner-suited-up fiancé. And what did I put on my feet? 

Flip flops. I wore flip flops. 

PS: special shout out to my fiancé who left work early to go on a mid-winter mission to find and buy me said flip flops.

Running Lessons

Remember last post I mentioned I was looking into joining a running course? Well, for those of you who might still be thinking that the fact I cancelled my 10K means I've lost momentum, I would just like to say: I am now signed up to not one, but two running classes/clubs! That's right. I perceive myself as being so crap at running that I've decided I need a double whammy of lessons in order to stand a chance of completing a half-marathon in February.

The first class/club is run right in my town at the local community centre and is completely free (yay). It will start next Tuesday at 7p.m. (not a.m. thank god - couldn't cope with that!) and keep going every Tuesday for the forseeable. I'm excited to run with this club as I am familiar with the roads around here and have run on a lot of them so it shouldn't be too much of a shock hopefully. 

The second class is run by a personal trainer in the next town over. The course is eight weeks long and would normally be fairly expensive but luckily for me the council has decided to subsidise the course and so I will get to join in for just £10! That's a win in my books. This course won't start till the beginning of October but in a way I am glad as it runs on a Monday and if both courses started at the same time I think my legs would never forgive me for the Monday/Tuesday bashing! 

So there we have it. I am excited. I'm also looking forward to meeting some potential new running buddies. And also laughing at myself internally for taking two beginner's running classes (even though technically one is a club). 

For those of you not interested in a rant about English summertime, feel free to leave now. If, however, you would like to join me in our country's national sport (talking about the weather - we should make it an Olympic event) then by all means keep reading.

I would like to register an open complaint with mother nature and her minions. Specifically the ones working in the English branch. My complaint is this: regardless of the "Indian summer" everyone is chatting about which is apparently due at some point, (although I swear I hear this every year at the end of summer - coping mechanism maybe?), and ignoring the two days of non rain we have had this past week (I refuse to call them days of sunshine), the summer is most definitely over. A summer that, from my point of view, consisted of maybe two weeks of sunshine and heat (not all in a row either) but was mainly comprised of the usual grey, rainy, windy, crappy weather we all know and despise. 

Two weeks of sunshine does not a summer make and I am sick of everyone pretending it does and going on and on about glorious picnics (sat in the damp grass from yesterday's rainfall, worriedly eyeing those ominous looking clouds over there and fighting a losing battle with an invading battalion of ants), and beautiful sunshine, and "I might actually get a tan at this rate!" jokes. No you won't, don't be ridiculous. 

In short I am tired of the collective denial everyone in this country seems to enter into every year between June and September. Let's face it: summer in this country doesn't exist. If you think it does then you need to leave the country more often and see what a real summer looks like. Hint: it has sunshine. Consistently. Rant over.