New Shoes

I think I have told most of you in the past that I am a Nike guy when it comes to my running shoes. I wore them through High School, College, and since College. I did go away from Nike about 3 years ago when the discontinued the Skylon for the first time. It was a disaster when the 2 shoes I got did not work well. I tries some Asics first but they were very heavy and then tried some really stiff Brooks. Nike then brought back the Skylon and I was back but a bit different than the first version, not as good but still OK.

Earlier this year, Nike once again discontinued the Skylon and replaced them with the LunarSwift. First of all, my usual size 11 1/2 didn't fit and I needed to get a size 12. I ended up getting extra blisters I usually don't get and they just didn't seem to be a good shoe for me. Nike doesn't offer any other light weight trainer shoe so I was stuck.

The store I go to sometimes said others who lies the Nike Skylon were trying this new shoe so I tried them out. It is the Saucony Kinvara. I walked around work in them today to get a feel for them and then after work, I went on a 5 mile run in them. So far I really love them, They feel a lot like the original Skylons but are much lighter. They have nice heal support but feel a lot like a racing flat. Somewhat feels like wearing a comfortable slipper and they are flexible on top. They felt very fast today even when my legs felt tired. I will run in them again tomorrow and then maybe on my really long run on Saturday morning.

I also had an interesting run on Tuesday evening. I left work for a 5 mile tempo run knowing a thunderstorm was brewing and closing in. 2 miles to go and the rain started but very light. then with ONLY a 1/4 mile to go, all hell broke loose and winds picked up to about 50 mph and the rain was pouring parallel tot he ground. Problem was I needed to go directly into the wind. The rain felt like hail and almost like it was piercing me. I could not look up and just looked straight down muscling through the wind, sometimes almost stopping me. I was completely soaked in 10 seconds and while it was not fun during it, in retrospect, it was fun to have survived it (from a running point of view). How quickly the weather changes here in Wisconsin.