Running and Shopping - What Girls Do Best!

Long before running became a passion of mine, I have loved to shop.For everything! Put me in any kind of retail situation and I will invariably end up parting with my hard earned cash. Take last night, for example. Whilst dinner was baking away in the oven (lasangne...Mmmmm...) I decided to pop down to the local supermarket and grab a bag of salad. Just that - Salad. Now, I know where the 'salad' aisle is in Tesco's.. you go in the door, turn right, and there it is. Unfortunately, I also know where the running magazines are.. and so as I entered the shop, I found myself sidling over to the left, thinking 'I'll just pick up Women's Running while I'm here...save coming back'! And before you know it, almost an hour has passed, my car is loaded up with not only Women's Running, but 2 new cookbooks (lots of pasta recipes, for 'carbing up'!!), some energy bars and gels (for the Sunday long runs.. may as well stock up now!) and some hair masks (um... will come back to that when I have thought of an excuse). And I had forgotten the salad - and burnt the lasangne...! Still.. I had new stuff... ;-)

Now, given how carried away I get when I'm just in Tesco's, you can imagine how I am once I get inside a running shop! As soon as I got into running, I got into buying running 'Stuff'. New trainers (essential - mainly as I didn't actually have any old ones!!), sweat wicking running tops (again...essential, I sweat perspire glow a LOT!) and seamless, non-rubbing Capri's. At first, I shopped for comfort reasons - my old, laze-around-the-house tracksuit wasn't really designed to do much more than slouch on the sofa and by the end of 10 minutes running would feel heavy, scratchy and like it was sticking to some very undignified parts of me!! So, reading around, I headed to the nearest sports shop and started trying on the 'proper gear'. Which is when I made my discovery: Running clothes can look GOOD! Get the right cut of top and some flattering colours.. and you can most definitely run in style!

Unfortunately for me, my discovery of stylish technical clothes did not coincide with discovering the less expensive shops and websites! This took a while - and it took even longer to find all the things I wanted, in the colours I wanted, all in the right size! I did, however, eventually create a list of all my favourite shopping sites - including:

Nike.com Just because I love Nike, rather than because it's generally cheap! They do some fantastic running stuff in bright colours and unusual prints to make you stand out on your run! My only grumble with this is I find the website frustratingly slow - but that may just be my computer!

Sheactive - A great variety of running clothes, all for girls! And, if you go to the actual shop in Brighton, really friendly, helpful staff :-)

Achillesheel.co.uk - Some great bargains if your happy to go with last seasons colours

wiggle.co.uk - A good range of running clothes, as well as catering for other sports - and good prices. Takes some rummaging though but you can get bargains again (can you tell I like bargains??!)


So, all these running shops have kept me happily spending my money for the last couple of years. Now, however, I have decided to go from shopper, to seller! And so, collecting up all my favourite running clothes (a combination of clothes I have tried and recommend, and clothes I have coveted but not yet got round to buying...!), I put them into my running store. But why stop at clothes? Before I knew it, I had added running books (I love to read...so can recommend majority of the ones I picked to sell, and the rest, like the clothes, are on my 'wanted' list!), cook books (LOVE to cook - and they are all running and sport focused!) and nutrition - from Nak'd and Trek bars (completely natural bars which are great for pre and post run - the Trek ones are designed for sport and perfect carb: protein ratio...and taste divine!) to gels, protein bars and the Cliff Shot Blok's that I will be using at the Brighton Marathon. My shop, basically, turned into my 'wanted' list!

Now, the shopping site that I use means that the products are sold through Amazon, and I get a small percentage of the sales. All good, as customers get the same security as if they are buying direct from Amazon, and the same low prices.. however, this did mean I had to search through the Amazon site to add the individual products (you can just add a whole section of the site, e.g. running clothes or sports, but I only wanted to include items I had personally checked I liked!). And somehow, by the end of setting up shop.. I was the owner of a gorgeous new Nike Storm Fly jacket... whoops!

So, please feel free to browse my shopping page - I will be adding to it as I try out new products :-)