After running my last pair of running shoes into the ground, I thought it best to heed my own advice and get fitted for a pair of new kicks. This meant a few things: 1) acknowledging that my old shoes were in fact dead; 2) going to a real, actual shoe store; 3) running on a treadmill. The first part was the easiest -- those shoes were dunzo.

To deal with the other points, I headed out to the Georgetown Running Company (the one in Georgetown, obviously) to get me some shoes. I bought my last (now defunct) pair there and when Ryan suggested we meet there it seemed as good a choice as any in the city. We showed up a little after noon on a Sunday -- I forget how bad parking in Georgetown can be from time to time -- and went in to talk with our trusty guide (Matt).

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I got out to run yesterday evening for the first time in a few days -- I'm still grooving strong in my (P-)Funk, mind you -- and I felt an unfamiliarity that I haven't dealt with in a year and a half. As I moved along my footfalls were no longer jarring, but smooth. I ran a bit faster than I'd planned -- not running for a few days and impatience will have that effect -- but I moved along steadily without any discomfort or strain.

What felt out of place on this run had nothing to do with the actual act of running, nor with my pace. When my feet hit the ground, they felt… soft. There was no sudden impact, no forced deceleration upon foot strike. Instead I felt a relaxed and smooth stride that I haven't felt for nearly a year.

I wore my new Brooks Glycerin 9s out for the first time yesterday, and I think that change alone made a big difference. I may have found the first running shoe that fits under the entirety of my forefoot -- my foot measures a 9 EE, the Brooks that I bought are a 9.5 D -- and I have a feeling that this will result in a much more easy-going running experience. Nearly every pair of shoes that I run in ultimately incur a blow-out in the upper due to a lack of lateral room; in the Glycerin I don't have to worry about my foot spilling over into empty space.

I could tell that I was hitting more forefoot yesterday than I have been recently in my old Nike Vomero 4s (this change ini foot strike may be pace-related) but most notably I felt a firm platform under-foot. That firm platform translated into a perceived efficiency that I haven't felt in a long time, one that has me excited to get back into my training.

Time will tell, but after a short three mile run in my new shoes, I'm feeling pretty positive about where these Brooks Glycerin 9s will take me.

New shoes -- prettay, prettay, prettay nice.

Running is pretty simplistic from a 'necessary gear' standpoint -- the only really required gear is a pair of shoes (well, nine months out of the year, at least). A good pair of shoes quickly becomes a non-entity during a run, a natural extension of the foot that neither hinders nor accelerates the run. While choosing a pair of kicks would seem simple, there are a number of differing opinions on what shoes work for what type of person. Support shoes, racing shoes, cushioned shoes, minimalist shoes -- the options go on and on.

Adding to the equation are annual (or more frequent) shoe manufacturer product cycles, causing runners to often buy a specific model in bulk in fear of their favorite shoe becoming obsolete. Depending on who you believe, a pair of running shoes is good for somewhere between 300 and 2000 miles -- meaning a person training for two marathons in a year may need upwards of four pairs of shoes per year, depending on how quickly they wear down their shoes. These two points are relevant to my current situation: I've logged nearly 950 miles in my current shoes, a pair of Nike Zoom Vomero 4s that I bought in September 2010. As great as the shoes have been, it's nearing time to put them out to pasture -- and I'm probably not going to find a new-in-box pair that's not already breaking down.

So this brings me to the ever-nagging question: what shoes should I buy next?

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If you tuned into the 2012 Rose Bowl on Jan. 2 that pitted the Oregon Ducks against the Wisconsin Badgers, you would have been presented with an unusual sight - one team in helmets so shiny they seemed almost as if they were aglow. SB Nation college football maven Spencer Hall likened the UO lids to those of French electronic-rock duo Daft Punk and the analogy wasn't that far off.

The HydraChrome helmets, which reportedly cost $800 apiece, were developed by Nike, Hydro Graphics Inc., and Riddell. The eye-catching headgear swallowed up a huge amount of interest leading up to the game and not a little bit after Oregon's 45-38 victory in Pasadena as well.

So what, you may ask, does this have to do with running? Quite a lot, actually.

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Last week, Cory wrote about his struggles with adapting to cold weather. Rather than trying to write any sort of definitive guide, I thought I'd offer a look at the two sets of gear that I have for running in the winter weather and why I chose these items.

The caveats: Metabolically I'm almost always hot – I tend to layer far less than most of my coworkers, rarely wear a heavy coat, and run in shorts down to about 15 degrees. I grew up in Northern Ohio, where six inches of snow can fall overnight and life goes on as usual. I now live in DC. The winters that I deal with now are far more mild and snow falls about three times a year. My 'cold gear' is designed to work where I currently live (though my low-temp gear has handled a –15 wind chill in Ohio just fine). This list may not help out runners in Winnipeg, but it should work for most of the country.

Just like plenty of other situations in life, it's probably in your best interest to buy a minimal number of versatile well-made things. Look at the clearance rack at local shops, Dicks Sports, or REI (lots of winter gear is on sale right now, especially at REI). These are clothes that you're going to sweat profusely in, so don't worry about colors or small stains. Worry about fit and functionality – if you do decide to spend a lot of money on a heavy fleece be picky, as a well-made fleece will last you ten winters at a minimum. With that in mind, here are the items that I go to in cold weather (I've included links to similar items; the exact models likely aren't still available).

40-15 Degrees:

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There's a misconception among some runners that their GPS watches are above reproach. You sometimes hear of runners complaining that a course was marked too long because their own Garmins ran a few tenths of a second longer than the posted race length. It'll even crop up in race reports on popular forums, on reviews on Yelp of MarathonGuide.com or on blog posts.

Almost always, the discrepancy between the GPS reading and the course length is due to the fact that certified courses are measured at the shortest possible distance with respect to corners and tangents, and because no one can reasonably run that absolutely shortest possible distance unless they are fast enough to go wire-to-wire in first place and have a brilliant mind able to see angles and tangents needed to take. Runblogger D.C. Rainmaker has gone into fabulous detail on this issue in the past.

But the New York Times last week took a different angle on why you shouldn't trust your Garmin: because Google Maps spits out a different number.

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