9 is Fine

I'm sitting here enjoying a nice rainy Saturday. This summer has been ridiculously dry so a rainy day is much appreciated!

I got out of the house early to try and beat the rain. Saddled up for my 9 mile run at FATS. To make it 9 miles I opted to run Great Wall and get the rest of the distance done on Skinny. Great Wall was a new trail to me - it's 7.5 miles, much shadier than Skinny, and also felt less hilly than Skinny. It does have ALOT of dips for the mountain bikers, they are kind of annoying to run up and down but it's ok. The last mile was basically one long hill and wore me down pretty good but I recovered from it. Great Wall is a beautiful, woodsy trail. Because this run was 9 miles I didn't want to kill myself out there so my pace was pretty easy. The temps were in the 70's and it was cloudy but not pouring yet. I fueled and hydrated very well this time - a pack of Honey Stingers and half a Nuun tablet in my water. Worked very well for me. This run was pretty great. I've been stressed out about alot of things lately, so it was really nice to just run it out for awhile. I didn't stress. I just kind of savored the run, enjoyed being outdoors, and took it all in. Wish I had taken a couple pictures but it wasn't really on my mind at the time.

However I did snap a picture of my delicious food from Genghis Grill. Freaking love this place.

So. The Inov8 Trailroc 226's. These were the evil bastard shoes that gave me blisters the size of Texas during my last obstacle race. I liked the shoes... but obviously there was a problem here. My guess was sizing - they were a 9.5 which is a half size up from my regular street shoes. I always go a half size up at least. Guess this calls for a size 10. To give this shoe another try I sent the 9.5's back and ordered 10's. They fit much better, but there's still the issue of heel slipping. I laced them accordingly but while walking my heels were still slipping. I feel like I am prone to heel issues and always have been. After a long walk I almost always end up with heel blisters. And I walked for MOST of the 9 hilly miles at Battlefrog. As far as actual RUNNING goes, I didn't have any issues at all in the new size 10's. Because I'm a mid/forefoot striker there's really no friction happening between the shoe and my heel.

Lacing Techniques

These shoes were pretty great today. They are zero drop but beefier than your typical floppy minimalist shoes. Protected my feet from hard rocks but still gave me plenty of foot control. The tread on these shoes is awesome, and that's a huge reason why I am trying to make this shoe work for me. They also did not tear up my feet as badly as my old New Balance Minimus (Minimuses? Minimii? What is the plural of this word!) and I wasn't dying to get out of my shoes and into my flip flops the instant my run was over. I actually wore them for like 2 hours afterwards as I milled around town doing errands and such. My heels weren't bothering me... but further testing is definitely needed with these shoes. I think tomorrow I will take them out on a recovery walk around my neighborhood and see how they feel. You might think this is not important, but I know that I will be walking alot at the Spartan Beast, and the Super on the very next day. I can't afford to get blisters with 2 very difficult races back to back. So if these shoes fail the walk test I'll have to send them back and maybe try the 150's or maybe the Reebok Spartan shoes.

Time to chill and do who knows what. Maybe find some food.....