Fourteen Beautiful Miles

What a beautiful day and a wonderful run with friend Jim on the hilly grass, dirt, and sand trails in the park. I had thought to do seven miles in the park and another seven or eight on the dirt road along the railroad track adjoining the park, but Jim isn’t fond of that rock-strewn dirt road (who can blame him) so we did the lovely 7.1-mile park loop twice. And the weather was perfect, about 60 degrees with modest humidity and just enough wind to be refreshing. The grass was a little dewy at 7:00 am, but that didn’t bother much.

No pains! Nothing but a slight hint of calf cramps, because I had forgotten to take my salt. That hint disappeared when I took it. I was even able to run down a couple of hills so steep that I had always walked them before, no problem. I wore the Brooks Summon shoes on those trails all summer, but those are now well over 300 miles and mostly retired, so today I wore my last pair of Brooks Burn shoes instead (discontinued, none to be found anywhere). I believe that is the major reason why I felt comfortable charging down hills - the Burns are just the right shoes for me. Darn it.

I’ve ordered two pairs of new shoes, the Brooks Launch, supposedly the Burn replacement, and the Nike LunarGlide, both in transit right now. I don’t know enough about Nike shoes to be sure that these are a "Burn" equivalent, they probably aren’t, but we’ll see. I’ll blog about them both. And I may try them both on the indoor track first, where I can run a few miles without any wear showing on the shoes. Returnable.

First loop 1:12:31, second 1:16:27, total 2:28:46, pace 10:29. It’ll do.


That's a grapefruit next to ordinary-sized things. I ate it.