New Shoes

Last night I went to bed excited that tomorrow was supposed to be in the fifties and cloudy which is perfect running weather for running the trails at Racoon Creek State Park. The best part was that it is winter so there is no overgrowth of weeds or briers to run through and no annoying insects such as deer flies and sweat bees.

Another reason to be excited was that I had a new pair of trail shoes to try. The best trail shoes that I've ever had are New Balance 706. They are light with not much cushion so you feel like you are wearing moccasins. You can actually feel the trail and there is nothing like flying downhill on a single track trail, dodging rocks, roots, and low hanging tree branches. When I'm running like that I can plot out my feet placement four and five steps ahead.

Anyway, back to the shoes. My wife recently started running again after an hiatus of over one year. She is now up to three miles and wants to run the IKEA Half Marathon. Sometimes it is hard to convince inexperience runners the importance of a good quality, properly fitted running shoe and my wife is no exception. I finally kidnapped her and took her to our local running store (Elite Runners & Walkers) for a new pair shoes for Christmas. As the sales clerk was fitting her I wondered over to the trail shoes to see what was new. The New Balance 921's stood out and I started to question the sales clerk about them. It seems that they are made for winter running in snow and ice. The most noticeable thing about these shoes is that they have removable spikes for ice and snow (details about the shoe can be found here: NB 921. After trying them on and feeling how good they felt on my feet I had to get them, plus what better time to get new shoes since my wife was getting hers. I did upgrade the spikes from the plastic ones that came with it to steel ones.


I arrived at the parking lot by the lake at 0715 and after a quick stretch I started out. For some reason I felt kinda of tired and sluggish. My legs felt heavy and I was contemplating on just doing a half loop of ten miles. I figured that I would wait until I came to HWY 18 before I made my decision. That would be the point that I would either turn and make a half or keep going and do the whole 20. When I arrived there I decided to keep going, hoping that I would start to feel better. I'm glad that I did because right about the eight mile mark I started feeling better.

I ended up finishing with a PR of 3:47. I've never ran it faster then 4:15 before. I have no idea why I ran it faster today. I didn't feel as if I was running faster then I had before. The shoes may of help a little but definitely not enough to take off 30 minutes. Anyway the shoes performed outstanding. I didn't use the spikes because there was no need, plus they would have taken a beating on the rocks. Even without them the shoes had outstanding gripping ability. I ran them through mud, up and down steep hills, and over loose leaves, and not once did they slip. A couple of times I came up on mud covered by leaves and had to make a quick move to the side of the trail. They never failed to grip. I also tested them on wet logs, wet and moss covered rocks, and did not slip.

In review, these shoes are great for technical single track trails. As I said above the gripping ability of these shoes are outstanding. They also are water resistant but the one time that I got got them really wet, they had no trouble drying out quickly. In other words they did not hold water. They were also firm with very little role to them so my ankles felt find afterwards.

I would not; however, recommend them for road use and they would be a bit of over kill for a rails to trails type of trail unless it was covered with snow or frozen ice. It that case they would be perfect. All in all I am really happy with these shoes.