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The forecast today was for pretty wild cold weather and it is spot on. Slipped out for my run in a brief sunny interlude but with dark clouds all about. Ended up coming home in freezing hail, launched at the angle to go into my ears (under the hat). I know its windy when I have to wend my way past a fresh-fallen tree up on the ridge. At least at the end I was tingling and it was lovely to come inside to the warm kitchen and luckily I had remembered to put the pot of pumpkin soup on quiet side of the hot wood stove. Soup tasted great with a spoonful of fat free yoghurt and a big pinch of Egyptian dukkah.
I had got myself a pair of size 10 Altra Eve's and used this easy recovery run to try them out. 8.3 km in 1 hr 10 mins. These are on a different point in the scale of minimalism in running footwear. The Lone Peaks and Intuitions are minimalist. These Eves are barefoot, much thinner altogether, more a mesh foot glove. They were too thin for me on the blue metal tracks and a bit slippy on clays. By the end of the run I was being careful as I could feel heel impacts and general tightening of ligaments around the ankles. Don't want to get injured, so easy to do, so slow to heal.
I like the Eve's but they are not for my tracks etc. They will find uses as they are lovely to wear, would be beautiful on grass and felt fantastic anytime the rocks went missing.
I also realised what the feel was that I had yesterday trying to run my best possible time on the Harriers run. I wore my Brooks Glycerins and felt the whole way I was battling against myself. What happens in these conventional shoes with lots of fangled gels/padding is that the natural rebound of the foot off the ground is deflected in the mush/goo which is doing its job in redirecting impacts. So the cadence slows, the knee lift becomes like lifting out of molasses and form goes worse. These padded skiboots can't help doing this.
The Intuitions and Lone Peaks help me, the Eve's are too extreme and have no impact protection, and the conventional shoes slow down my cadence.
