Midweek update: Free Shoes (Yea!) and Speed Work

Last night, I reviewed the trail shoes on the Montrail website, and read reviews on various trail shoe websites. I selected the Montrail Streak. It is their lightest weight trail shoe, which works best for me, yet it still has all the traction control and additional protection of a traditional trail runner.Thank you Montrail, for sponsoring the Punxsutawney 50k and awarding free shoes to the winning team. I cannot wait to give these a tryout on the local trails. I already have a pair of Nike Humara trail shoes, but since Humaras are almost as unstructured as the Free (think bedroom slippers with a swoosh logo), they are not idea for the more rocky and rough trails, and they are very poor if your run happens to include some roads. I am hopeful that the Streaks will give me a good option in those conditions.

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In my previous post, I described our trail run Saturday, a mudfest with lots of hills to complete the package. Sunday morning, my legs were telling me to give them a rest already, but with Chicago looming n the 3 week horizon, I needed to do a minimum of 20 miles. I got out early and put in 7 miles before the SERC group started, then ran 12 with the group, and tagged on the last mile alone. I arrived back at home at about 5 minutes before 10:00 AM, which put the pressure on since I had to be showered and ready to leave the house by 10:00. (Sue and I drove to The Pub to watch a rare match televised on Setanta featuring the mighty Queens Park Rangers. The match was live from Loftus Road stadium in Sheperds Bush. It was great to see the place again. Of course, we dismantled the befuddled Saints, 4-1. We are now 5th in the table and looking very promising for promotion.)

On Monday, I did a 6 mile recovery run, and felt much better for it. Tuesday at the Track was back on track after a few weeks off. I warmed-up for 2.5 miles at a slow pace, did some stride-outs to prepare, and then ran three intervals of one mile each with a 400 yard recovery between. The first was 5 minutes 49 seconds, and the second and third were both 5 minutes 55 seconds. It felt good to get below 5:50, and I thank Steve Hawthorne who ran that first mile with me.