Week 35: Sport in my underpants

A silly start to the week.  I wanted to go to the gym, but on arrival found I had taken two T-shirts and no shorts.  I had a brief moment of madness when I considered doing my exercises in my underpants.  However painful memories of school gym in underpants, after having forgotten my gym kit, stopped me.  There was also the very colourful underpants, that I had pulled on in my half asleep state, which brought me to my senses.  I consoled myself with the idea that I could at least have a hammam.  Wrong again.  After having slipped on my swimsuit, I wrapped a towel around myself and strolled nochalantly down the corridor, only to discover that it was closed for cleaning.  So I headed home frustrated and did a series of exercises in the living room.
The weather has turned cold, again, it even snowed on Monday morning.  Despite this I forced myself out and up for my first run of the week.  This time it was my calf muscles that decided to cause problems.  As soon as I started climbing, they began hurting and became rigid.  I pushed on, with frequent pauses.  I reached 1100m before running back down to the village at 500m.  My performance was disappointedly slow but at least I got out.
My stiff and painful knees are still worrying me.  It occurred to me that when I first started running a year ago I used an old pair of Reebok trainers and suffered knee pain.  As soon as I invested in an expensive pair of running shoes the pain disappeared.  These expensive shoes are now more than a year old and, though outwardly looking good, have covered some 900 kilometres.  Once again I hit the web for advice about when to change shoes, everything I read seemed to suggest a new pair of shoes was in order.  I had been planning to get a new pair before my run in August so now is as good a time as any.  Hopefully the added benefit will be less knee pain.
The weather turned bad again at the end of the week, so I went to the gym with my new running shoes.  I gave them a good 9km test on the hated running machine.  So far so good they seem comfortable but I need to test them on the trails to be really sure.