Tuesday 10 February 2009

New trainers


I braved the snow today and decided to go out for a run at lunchtime.The Lisbon half marathon is less than six weeks away and I'm massively behind with amount of running and mileage I wanted to be doing by this point.

Bought a couple of new pairs of trainers in the January sales, one of which were these Salomon XA Pro 3D Ultras. It makes me cringe running in less than perfect conditions with pristine white road running shoes, so these should come in handy this year with all the adventure races and off road running. First impressions are good. They fit very snugly with their interesting lacing system - instead of regular laces they've got a drawstring arrangement which tucks away neatly into into the tongue. Not only does it look really neat but you can put the shoes on and have them tightened perfectly in seconds. Getting them off is a breeze too, especially compared to untying tight lace knots on regular trainers with post-run frozen fingers. Size-wise they're a touch on the narrow side, not too much of a problem for me really but worth considering if you have wider feet. The main thing that surprised me (other than being really bright red) was how light and comfortable they are to run in. I've put off getting specific trail running shoes for a while, worrying about all the extra weather protection making them heavy and cumbersome. Not so, these feel great, even on the road. Big thumbs up.