New Race Shoes

I forgot I ordered the orange ones, imagine my surprise when I opened the box. Oh I like em, love em, I just forgot.

I thought you were cute when I saw you on the magazines, you're so photogenic. So sexy. No, no it's true, really, it's not the wine talking. You're awesome. In fact, I was smitten when I got to hang out with you back in June at Fontana Sport Shop in Madison, Wisconsin. I was in town for the Kettle Morraine 100. I arrived two days early, had some time to kill and there you were. Just like my Velocity's but lighter. You're awesome, did I say that already? yes? no? well you are. However I was uh...well...I was preoccupied at the time. There were other shoes involved and things were getting complicated. I'm free now though and I'm asking – Will you whoop some butt with me at the races? I'm not the fastest but I give 110%. I have a good game face and when I suck it in I look 5 pounds lighter. Oh and I run in Drymax socks now. I know, I know I'm livin' large these days. So what say you?

Since Montrail stopped making the Leona Divides I switched to Vasque and have never looked back. I'm always running around in different shoes and always on the lookout for new ones but my race shoes these days are the Vasque Velocity's. These babies are the Velocity VSTs, a lighter version, less tank like and a bit more stylish. They are lighter. I ran on them for the first time Tuesday, a quick road run and they felt great. Hopefully I'll get a chance to take them running on Mt. Tam after I'm done volunteering at SF24 on Sunday morning, my friend Jason is supposed to pick me up.

San Francisco One Day or SF24 as I like to call it is a timed run in Crissy Field. There's a marked route that is 1.067 miles and people run and run laps until the time is up, runner with the most miles wins. There's also a 12-hour race. It will be beautiful by the Golden Gate Bridge and the weather forecast says we will have cooler temperatures because the fog will be back, nothing like the 80-90 degree sunny weather we've been having. Even the nights have been warm. Lucky them but I digress.

The shoes are lighter but unfortunately too light for my normal long runs. They're perfect race shoes and I think they'll do great at the Quad Dipsea and at the Northface 50-miler but my long training runs will break them down too quickly. You see I have to chew up a lot of asphalt before I taste trail. On my usual 6-hour runs to the Marin Headlands and back at least 2 hours of that is on asphalt. So it seems I will be keeping the regular Velocity's in the line up after all - good.

Update: They just updated the weather forecast and now they are saying that the warm weather won't abate until Monday. This means that tomorrow Crissy Field will be teeming with people, kids and animals. The runners will have lots of company and family and friends who are coming down to support will absolutely love the weather. The runners on the other hand...it's gonna get very warm for them. I was just outside, it's warm. Now some of you are probably asking, "what numbers are we talking about here?" Dave, J~Mom, don't laugh - 80s.