Not Quite The Full Customer Experience ....

Saturday: Well buying my new trainers wasn't quite the experience I was hoping it was going to be.  This particular Sweat Shop forms part of a David Lloyd leisure centre and at 12 noon on a Saturday you can imagine just quite how busy it was which was why we were flabbergasted to only find one person covering the whole shop.  Chaos ensued.  We specifically made the trip to Bristol to go to this particular store as they did the gait analysis and, as a specialist running shop, I felt that the service I would receive would be better than the likes of the more generic sports shops such as Sports Direct or JD Sports.  Unfortunately that was not the case; whichever management person decided it was a good idea to reduce cover to one person on a weekend lunchtime wants shooting.  I can't fault the poor shop assistant, in fact she was staying remarkably cool under the circumstances, but she was literally trying to serve five people at once.  Having examined my bare feet, she bought out a neutral pair of trainers to try on and then promptly disappeared to deal with another customer.  Five minutes later she was back, I got to run on the treadmill for all of 10 seconds and was then advised I had a neutral gait and she would go off and get some pairs of shoes for me to try.  In the meantime though, as I was taking my shoes off, she went away to deal with another customer.  Five minutes later I got a selection of shoes to try, got the first ones on only to find she had disappeared again to help someone else.  Tried the first pair on the treadmill, they were okay but was advised to try the others as well.  Again, no sooner had I come off the treadmill then she disappeared to serve yet another customer and it was a good five minutes until I saw her again.  This farce went on for over an hour, to be honest if we hadn't travelled so far I would've walked out but I had my heart set on a pair of new trainers so I stuck it out.  Needless to say Other Half and Sons One and Two were not amused by the whole episode and I got back to the car after an hour to find three very fractious boys!  Having said all that I am really pleased with my trainers - New Balance w1080v2 - but I think I shall be voting with my feet next time and I won't be returning there when the time comes to replace them.

The more I think about it, the more I am really disappointed by the whole experience, I was really hoping to be treated as a valued customer especially when you consider the shoes I was buying were meant to be £95 (although I got them on sale for £69) but instead I just felt like I was more of an inconvenience.

Sunday: Today I thought I would try my new shoes out, make sure I got on with them okay.  I must say one good aspect of Sweatshop is that they offer a no-quibble 30 day money back guarantee on all their trainers if you find you don't get on with them for any reason; now that's good customer service.  As the weather was reasonable, I thought I would do a long run and ended up covering 10.5 miles, all on-road; well I didn't want to get my new trainers muddy, did I?  Had a lovely run and the trainers were super comfortable, they provide so much more bounce than my old pair.

Monday: Day off today although not through choice - Other Half not feeling well so he went to bed when I got home from work which put pay to running.  Oh well, probably no harm done as I managed to get my long run in yesterday.

Tuesday: Club run tonight but not a great one.  Only three of us turned up again (we're like the terrible trio) and we did an off-road run; needless to say my white trainers are now no longer white!  Struggled tonight, I keep getting bad stomach cramps which makes running somewhat difficult.

Wednesday: Ran to Slimming World and again a really hard run even though I was in the mood for it.  For some reason legs felt very heavy and it was a real struggle to do the four miles to the weigh in.  However, great news, another pound off this week which means I have reached my 'Personal Achievement Target' of a loss of 4 st 1 lb so I now have free lifetime membership to Slimming World, a handful of certificates and a metal pin badge to show for all my efforts; take a look at my wall:

Shame we never have any visitors to show it off to!  Still, it makes me happy to see it.  I do actually want to lost another half a stone but I am now going to concentrate on getting fitter rather than weight loss.

Thursday: Club run again tonight, 8.28 miles off-road.  Lovely run but my knees are hurting a bit now.  A lot of it was through waist-high grass and I have real problems with running through such going as I naturally have a very low running action (my feet barely skim the ground when on tarmac) so having to lift them higher to stop the grass from grabbing at my legs is a real effort.  But it was enjoyable nonetheless, it's lovely running with other people for the company if nothing else.