The Hardest Mile...

There is a saying that says the hardest mile is the first...well we tried hard last night to prove its the last. With 3.99 miles run on our iPods we had only 1.01 more to go for our 5 miles. About 0.03 into our last mile I went down. Let me preface that with my new shoes. We think a lot of my leg pain was due to the new Nike's I got, and their lack of arch support was probably causing my foot to pronate causing me to run on the arch of my foot and not the flat part. This can cause severe tightening of the anterior tibialis (shin muscle) which is what was hurting me before. I've been running in an older pair of running shoes in which the laces are stretched out pretty long. Turns out too long. I had double knotted the laces to shorten them a little, but after 4.02 miles I found out they weren't short enough. My left shoe got "roped" by the loop in the lace of my right shoe and I took a flying leap 5'10" down to the pavement. No major injuries (besides the embarrassment of doing it at a busy intersection). I did have to do some minor surgery to remove 2 rocks that had embedded themselves into my palm, and my knee has a nice strawberry on it, but nothing major.
After I retied my shoes (with triple knots), we looked at our iPods and they said we had run 4.02 miles total, so it was really only 0.03 miles into the last mile. About 0.04 miles later we enconutered a large pothole (on a sidewalk transfer) which sent the jogging stoller into the air, as well as our iPods which were in the cup holders. We know we have tendencies to drop (and destroy) electronics, so we were glad we had gotten the hard plastic cases for the iPods. However, now the iPods have hit the pavement and the cases were strewn on the road and sidewalk. Rohan, of course, didn't wake up through the whole thing, so that was nice.
After picking up the pieces (literally) we ran the remaining 0.94 miles without incident, but we kept waiting for that next obstacle so it felt like a little longer mile.
Glad all miles aren't like the beginning of that one or we wouldn't be running anymore! :)