Of all the crazy things to do, with only a handful of days to go, I ended up with new shoes. I have been having trouble with my feet for a couple months now, from nearly-blistered hotspots to plantar fasciitis, to bleeding scrapes from the shoe itself. My Topo Athletic Ultraventure Pro (?) died a horrible death, and only about 100-ish miles into it. The plastic toe cap liner (protects from rocks) delaminated, and the edges curled under cutting my toes on the descent. I was going to wear them too. I took them in to where I bought them, Runners Corner in Orem, and the girl who ended up having to put her magazine down didn’t want to help, said there was no such thing as delamination, and wanted to know if there was something I wanted to buy. I declined much more gracefully than I would have liked to.
With only a week to go, I got talked into going in to Utah Run in American Fork. I have gotten a few pairs of shoes there, and appreciate the more inclusive and open-minded employees there. Hope we didn’t just jinx them. I ended up with a pair of Saucony Peregrine 11, which have sufficient curvature for my wacked feet, and tread that reminds me a bit of my old Salomon Crossmax I used to run in way back before Hoka.
My own taper program, derived from modeling 2019 (Broken Arrow VK, at which I felt really strong) I had a couple miles on the treadmill with a few quick intervals/strides in store, so I did that on Friday in the new Peregrine, and the new Ultra Spire handheld as an experiment. It went pretty well, but I didn’t quite hit my target TSS from Training Peaks.
This morning, Saturday, I decided to run/walk/jog on one of my favorite trails nearby, Green Monster, a Strava route just a few miles away. I parked at the Murdock Canal parking and headed up Giddy-Up, a “hoof and boot” trail (meaning no mountain bikes, though there is a guerilla bike park about a quarter mile up it for the local kids in the hood), forked on the “Bench Road” (which is actually the BST-enough) and then up Green Monster for two laps. I did some sustained effort at 2500’/hr vertical, some intervals of strong power hiking at 3600’/hr and on the flatter sections, some intervals at 9:00 pace. On the return to the car I sustained a half mile-ish at 12:00 or less just to burn out the fat.
Next time, let’s talk about the “Almost but not quite VK” next Friday, setting up HR zones in all the apps and stuff, and maybe some more fun things.
