5 weeks of training are in the books and I’ve got 14 to go before the marathon. I had a cross training day on Monday which included the woosher (a.k.a. Elliptical Machine) and an abbreviated lifting session. It was nice to get a little bit of cardio work in while not hammering my legs into the ground for a change.

Yesterday I had a quick 3 mile run on the treadmill at the gym. I finished in 24:31 which works out to an 8:10 mile so I felt fairly speedy. When I tackle longer distances – even the 5 mile distance tonight – I want to scale back some to lower my chance of injury. I still figure I should be moving on a 3 mile day, however, since it’s so short.

I’ve been thinking about shoes a lot recently. Not flip flops, dress shoes, crocks, or even the dreaded aqua socks. I’ve been thinking of running shoes.

For a little background I currently own an old pair of New Balance 991’s and a new pair of Asics Gel-DS-Trainer XI’s. The 991’s have been my workout workhorse for over a year and logged around 200 miles in 2005 and probably another 70 to 80 miles in 2006. This is in addition to the running I did in them before I started tracking my miles (which I will admit was not very many miles). The 991’s still feel great and show little signs of wear but I did notice some plastic on the back of the shoe is cracking. I have read that the running life of a running shoe is about 500 miles so I’m wondering if I should replace the 991’s and get a second new pair of running shoes I could wear in the marathon.

As far as the Asics go, I got them at the end of 2005 (Christmas Gift) and have put somewhere between 100 and 150 miles on them. My concern as far as the Asics go is wearing them out just before the race and having the unfortunate choice of either having to break in new shoes at the last minute or just deal with a pair that is broken down. Since the Asics are a lighter (much lighter) training flat they will break down sooner than the 991’s.

So I need to decide if I will keep running in the 991’s and if so for how much longer. I also need to get a new pair of shoes sooner rather than later so they will be nice and broken in before the race should I want to wear those rather than the Asics. What’s a runner to do?

Tonight I’m going to hit the gym and bang out 5 miles like it’s my job. Tomorrow I’m going for my second consecutive run with the Niketown Running Club here in Chicago after work.