Blog 8/24/09

Well this is it…the week I’ve been waiting for. The USATF National Trail Championships are this Saturday. I’ve booked my hotel room and downloaded a map of the course and I’m ready to roll. Last Saturday I did a Time Trial on my practice course. It’s roughly 6 miles long and very hilly trail running, so I figured it would be a reasonable mock-up of the actual race course (most likely easier than the real course which has 1300′ of vertical gain… and, of course, another 1300′ of loss as well). Three months ago best time on my practice course was just under an hour…58 minutes and some change. Last Saturday my training partner, Billy Jonas, and I ran it in 47:10 which tells me that all of my conditioning work is paying off. Since I haven’t been on the actual course, I’m not making any predictions on how I expect to do.

Here’s my race strategy. What I do plan to do is focus for the entire race on all the ChiRunning hill focuses I’ve been practicing… lots of upper body and arm swing on the uphills and as much speed as I can ask of these old legs on the downhills. As is traditional for me, I don’t plan to push the uphills much since that’s the place where most runners burn through their stored glycogen too quickly. I’ll be racing in a pair of La Sportiva Crosslite trail shoes designed for fell running. They’ve got incredible traction and they’re flexible, flat and lightweight…couldn’t ask for a better shoe for this event.

I’m taking it a little easier for the rest of this week…stoking up on my carbs and spending as little time sitting in my office chair as I can get away with (it’s deadly on my hamstrings and back). You’ll be the first to know how I do.

Happy trails,
Danny

Well, it had to happen. One of the best all-round running shoes has gone the way of the dodo bird. The New Balance 790 is no longer in production. I’ve been touting it’s attributes and urging anyone who would listen, to buy the shoe if they we’re serious about finding a shoe that was truly suited to the midfoot strike. It is without a doubt one of the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever worn…period. It has a low profile. It’s extremely flexible throughout the length of the shoe. Its light weight makes it feel like little more than an extra layer of skin on my feet, yet there’s just enough cushioning to keep me from feeling the worst that any trail has to offer. What can I say, I love these shoes.

Ironically, it has also been one of NB’s most successful models ever, spanning the range of uses from a colorful, casual/style shoe to an all out trail racing flat. There are lots of other great midfoot strike shoes out there, but for whatever reason, this one hit the nail on the head.

I highly suggest that if we’d like to see NB continue producing this shoe, we should make a lot of noise about its “decommissioning” and email them to express our desire to see it continued. Unfortunately, NB makes it very difficult to give feedback to them directly so I will give you the email address of a friend in their wear test department who is willing to gather your input. Please send your letters to: Ryan.Miller@newbalance.com

I’ll be reviewing other great shoes in future blogs, but I wanted to get the ball rolling on this one first.

BTW, these shoes are still available on most online running shoe sites and they range in price from $49-$79…a great deal.

Danny

While teaching in Denver this weekend I took advantage of the opportunity to visit some old friends, some I haven’t seen since I left the area ten years ago. After spending most of my childhood in the Denver area, I moved to Boulder where I went to college and lived for the next 32 years. Needless to say my running roots here run deep.

I stayed with a friend in Boulder for a couple of days and was blessed to be able to run some of my favorite trails again. The familiar sights and the beauty of the foothills of the Rockies brought back many fond memories of the years I spent running and exploring the canyons and meadows with fellow runners. I realized that some of the most peaceful and deeply nourishing times of my life been spent while being immersed in Nature, and I’m eternally thankful for the lessons, insights and ideas that have come to me during my “running meditations.”

On the recommendation of a friend I went for a trail run in the hills just south of Boulder in the Eldorado Canyon area. I borrowed his bike to ride to the trail head, about three miles away. It was a nice way to warm up for the run. The first part of the run was a steady 3-mile climb which led me up to the base of some of the huge sandstone formations that Boulder is famous for. At the top of the ascent the trail turned north and meandered through meadows filled with Bee Balm flowers so thick that at times they completely obscured the trail. I could see Boulder way off in the distance and the Front Range mountains extended north like the spine of an endless dragon.

The best part of the run was when the trail abruptly spat me out into a breathtaking view of Eldorado Canyon…world-renowned for its thousand foot rock-climbing walls. I stopped dead in my tracks, totally awed by the immensity and striking beauty of what I was looking at, feeling that I could easily spend the rest of the day right where I was. I didn’t follow my impulse, but I did shift into a more effortless running gear as I left the spot. I spent the remainder of my run with my eyes wide open and running with the sense that I didn’t want to miss any part of the beauty that was being presented to me. And then the question came up in my mind…what would it be like if I were able to allow myself to experience every moment of every day with the same sense of wonder and awe that I was momentarily swept into?

We all get so caught up in the details of our everyday lives, that we need experiences like this to remind us of how blessed we are to partake in this thing called Life. I finished my run feeling a deep sense of well-being and gratitude and got back to the trail head to find my bike with a flat tire.

Just as I was beginning to feel jerked out of my bliss I spotted a man in the parking lot who had just finished a trail ride with his daughter. He gave me a lift back in to Boulder and I was once again reminded that all is well.