Archive January 2018

Picked up a pair of Lone Peak 3.5’s. For two reasons, as usual Altra’s sizing is all over the place. I’ve been running Lone Peak 3.0’s in size 13 and they’re fine for daily driving as long as there are no steep descents. Then they’re too short.

I had the same issue with Altra Paradigm 2.0’s. A 13 is too small and results in black toenails. A 14 is too big and sloppy.

In Escalante’s I’m a size 13 perfectly. I love the Escalantes and I have my 5th pair waiting their turn in the rotation. I keep one active daily training pair, an active race pair and a back up for when I move each one down. The daily training pair becomes a occasional daily just wear shoe (not running). The race pair becomes the daily training. The back up pair becomes the race pair. Then I order a new pair. Did I mention I love the Escalantes?

Anyway… the LP 3.5s in size 14 are more like a 3.0 in 13.5 and sizing is spot on for me and I can scramble down hills all day long (well not really) without any toenail issues.

Other than the sizing is still borked the 3.5’s to me are a minor upgrade to the 3.0’s. Moderate stack height. Decent ride. Decent support. Heel cup is leaps and bounds better than the LP 2.5’s.

Thought I’d start adding little notes on runs just to have something to look back on when I’m old and feeble (er).

Today the run was intervals, we backed up about 6 weeks in our schedule to have our end date in sync with our first full marathon.  FYI we’re running a full marathon in March.

Anyway this pulled us back a bit in effort level so this was a 15 minute warm up, then 5 repeats of 3 minute sprints + 90 second recovery then a cool down.

At this time both myself and Running Wife #1 (I have 3 now although one isn’t aware of it) have succumbed again to some level of injuries so we’re kind of having to take it easy anyway.

I was also on a conference call for work during this run and it was cold with a pretty bad head wind on top of that.  And I was under-dressed because I expected temps in the 50’s and it was in the 30s’.

Nothing super noteworthy about this run, we went south along Riverparks instead of our usual north as I wanted to try and cut down some of the noise from traffic. But it just caused more noise from wind as there are no wind breaks on that section at all.

In looking at the same run from 5 weeks ago, sadly there wasn’t any real improvement.  But I was distracted during the run due to the conference call and I don’t feel like I was putting 100% into it.  I know my RSS for that other run was probably a 8 or 9 and this was was maybe a 7.

Tomorrow is an easy run of 30 minutes but we’re going to change it to hills because we seriously need hill work.

We’re trying to find the ‘right’ 50K for 2018 to be our first time at that distance and it’s tough.   Between cut off times, total elevation change, scenery/location, expenses, it’s not an easy decision to make.

We have a 30K in 3 weeks and then our first full in 7 weeks.