My Computer Crashed!

Thursday, Nov 5, 2009:

And so did my watch! I had a blog post almost ready, and then BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH! About a week ago now, accounting for some of the delay in posting. This has happened before on this laptop. There is a flaky connection between the motherboard and the hard disk, and eventually the hard disk gets corrupted and the boot files are overwritten with junk. Or so it seems. Repair doesn’t work - the only solution is to wipe the disk and do a complete reinstall of Windows XP. It’s a six-year-old laptop, crashed several times now, and I responded to this latest crash by ordering a new laptop. Ten times the disk, ten times the speed, twice the screen area, about the same price as six years ago. Meantime, this little old clunker is limping along again. I might try to keep it running, because it’s a lot smaller and lighter than the new one.

The watch crashed Tuesday. Tsk.

Today’s run was 3.3 miles in 33:11, pace 10:03. Some walking, but apparently mostly running, or the pace would have been slower. The watch worked OK today. I hope it keeps working - I don’t have time to get a new one right away. Brooks Summon shoes - gosh they felt clompy compared with the Launch shoes I’ve been wearing. Even compared with the Nike Lunarglides.

Tuesday, Nov 3, 2009:

My watch crashed! Not a good week for hardware. I finished a 4.2-mile run, pushed the button to record the finish time, and the watch went blank. Then it started up again, midnight, January 1. Darn. The time for this run isn’t important, but I just replaced the battery in this Timex watch and now it looks like I should probably have replaced the watch itself. It is six years old, almost seven. Probably time.

Before the crash, though, I clocked myself doing two of the loops at a 9:22 pace. I suppose the overall pace was in the vicinity of 9:30. Or so. I felt very good this morning. Except for the watch, it’s a masterpiece!

Sunday, Nov 1, 2009:

St Croix Valley runners, “standard” eight-mile Sunday run. We haven’t done this run in a long time, though, at least I haven’t. Cool at 7:00 am, 30 degrees or so, but great for running. Gauss, Candy, and I took it fairly easy and enjoyed the run. Time 1:31:49, pace about 11 ½ minutes/mile. It’s good.

Saturday, Oct 31, 2009:

BOO! St Croix Valley Runners, the usual five miles, but mostly in the dark. I was surprised how dark it was at the start, because I had run with these folks just two weeks before and it sure didn’t seem so dark then. But sunrise is racing forward about ten minutes per week these days. New guy Kent joined us again for the second time, and took off in front with Dave2, himself just back from a very successful 50-mile trail race. Then George and Paul, and finally Gauss and myself. We had a nice, easy run, finishing in 49:43, for a pace just under ten minutes per mile. Dave1 showed up after the run to let us know how his surgery went. He won’t be running for a while but seems cheerful..

Beautiful morning, enjoyable run.

Thursday, Oct 29, 2009:

North St Paul Community Center upstairs track, four miles running & one more walking. I felt a little pain in the bone just below the right kneecap, so I stopped running. No problem later - false alarm. But I was wearing the Nike Lunarglide shoes, and will stop wearing them for a while, after that maybe only on trails.

Splits: 9:06, 8:43, 8:58, 8:51, total 35:38, pace 8:55.

Caffeine works!

On the way out to a 16-mile run I grabbed a couple of packages of Clif Shot Gels, one cran-razz and one orange. I ate the cran-razz first, at miles 4 and 8. Then at mile 12, I had half of the package of orange.

By that time I was getting a bit tired - walk breaks were more frequent and maybe a little longer. But around mile 14 my energy picked up again. Walk breaks nearly disappeared. This doesn’t just happen, so I checked the package of orange Clif Shot Gels and saw that it says "with caffeine." I had completely forgotten that any of the gels contained caffeine, and wasn’t expecting the pickup, so it was definitely physical and not psychological. I’ve felt this pickup from caffeine before, especially in marathons, but never quite so dramatically. Just 50 measly milligrams of caffeine from green tea extract, according to the package. The benefit lasted for at least two miles, perhaps more but my run was over.

Today the idea was to take it easy - long, slow distance. That’s just what happened. No pains worth mentioning, just tired muscles, which feels pretty good actually. Because of recent ankle issues, I ran in my last pair of Brooks Burns rather than the Summons that I have been using for training. That might have helped.

A beautiful 64-degree day, lots of people on bikes, a few on skates, and plenty of moms & dads pushing babies in strollers. Egrets and herons, with lots of noisy frogs for them to lunch on. Precious few runners, but it was nice to cross paths with my sweeties on the way back from the northeast turnaround.

Water at the even-numbered miles, gels every four miles. So far, barring any still-quiet injury, this run was an unqualified success. It’s a masterpiece.

Splits: 9:10, 9:47, 10:41, 8:54, 9:41, 9:37, 10:14, 10:10, 10:30, 10:24, 10:28, 9:05, 11:21 (phone calls), 9:31, 9:46, 9:10, total 2:38:28, pace 9:54.



Recent dinner: Bison garam masala with peas, spinach, onions, and tomatoes, and chopped cucumbers with yogurt.

Brooks Summon Shoe Review, Updated

Two weeks ago I reviewed the brand-new Brooks Summon, comparing it with the Brooks Ghost and Burn. At that time I ran only a short distance in the Summon, but today I ran five miles with them on the indoor track at the club. So far so good. The Summon feels well-cushioned, with a very smooth transition from foot strike to toe-off. There is a slight slapping noise at foot-strike, but only a little more noise than the Burn makes. In my experience, this slap drops off a little as a pair of shoes collects a few meaningful miles. Perhaps they get a little more flexible.

I wish the tread wasn’t the kind that collects pebbles and grains of sand. Otherwise, so far, this is a great pair of shoes. Brooks is bringing out the Launch in July, as a direct replacement for my favorite, the discontinued Burn. I hope it’s as good as the Summon seems to be. Maybe it will even have a good tread.

A few days ago I ran into a guy who appeared knowledgable about Brooks shoes. He said that the Summon is a good shoe with a cost-reduced upper and aimed for more of a mass market than most running shoes, which are intended to be sold at running stores. You might find the Summon at Dick’s Sporting Goods, for example, but at The Runners Edge you would find the Ghost and the Defyance instead. We’ll see if it works out that way. So far, Dick’s doesn’t have it on their website, but Zappos does. The web makes all of that marketing stuff harder.

Splits: 8:56, 8:44, 8:48, 8:41, 8:42, total 43:50, pace 8:46. No pains, no strain. Good run, still recovering from the marathon.


Recent dinner: No-hormone no-antibiotic free-range beef, organic carrots, mango, pineapple, organic parsnips.

Today's lunch: Taco soup with free-range no-hormone no-antibiotic ground beef & organic vegetables, organic blue-corn chips with flax seeds (Target), avocado, & organic hot peppers.

Today's breakfast (hungry after snow shoveling): Gluten-free oatmeal with flame raisins & dried cranberries, banana, mango, Dove dark chocolate, organic strawberries, organic blueberries, organic fat-free milk.

Brooks Summon Shoe Review

I have used Brooks Burn shoes almost exclusively for the past six years, not only for training but hundreds of races including 32 marathons. Since Brooks discontinued the Burn, I've searched for a replacement. I need a cushioned shoe, average width, little more. So far I've stuck to Brooks shoes, because I like the fit. Today I tried out their newest shoe for neutral biomechanically-efficient runners, the Summon. I found them for $60 on Amazon.com, though it seems the price has since gone up a lot. Today I tested them for a few laps, on an indoor track to keep them new in case I needed to return them, comparing them with a pair of Brooks Burns and a pair of Brooks Ghosts, all size 11 1/2. I ran laps in each model of shoe, and more laps with one model on one foot and another model on the other. Here are some results:

• Weight: All three pairs are within an ounce of the same weight, 24 to 25 ounces for both shoes.
• Size: The Summon is about the same as the Burn, and larger than the Ghost, which for some reason is undersized.
• Fit: This is why I want to stick with Brooks - I have almost no blisters or other fit problems with the Burns. When I put on the Summons, I could feel the heel sliding up and down a bit. So I threaded the laces into the very last holes, as I do with the Burns, and the heel felt properly snug.
• Shape:
  • Toe Box: Not as wide as the Burn, or so it appears, and certainly not as wide as the Ghost. But it didn't bother my foot in this short run.
  • Heel: The heel is long! It comes a full inch farther forward, toward the arch, than does the heel of the Burn. Perhaps this replaces the Burn's "lateral arch pod," absent on the Summon and the Ghost.
  • Sole: Like the Burn, the sole of the Summon curves gently toward the toe to allow a smooth transition.
  • Width: Fine.
• Tread: Very aggressive, as if the shoe was designed for the track, or maybe for trail running! It also has hundreds of small crevices that will collect tiny rocks which I will no doubt track into the house. Or they will drop from one shoe into the other as I run. That's just dumb design. The first Burns were like that too, but the tread design improved as the original Burn went to Burn II and Burn III.
• Color: Black, white, lime. Who cares.
• Cushioning: Well cushioned according to my feet and the finger-poke test. At least as responsive as the Burns too, though to be fair these Burns have 187 miles on them and the Summons have none.
• Ride: Very smooth. Unlike the Ghosts, they make very little slapping noise on the track, and they certainly aren't even broken in yet. The transition from heel-strike to toe-off seems very smooth, as good as the Burn.
• Manufacture: Made in China like everything else.

I wish Brooks was more runner-centric rather than marketing-centric. I don't think they entertain genuine input from real runners, actual customers, even though they supposedly have lots of runners in the company. Here are a few examples of what I mean:

• The shoe treads with little crevices that pick up small stones don't do any good and can be simpler and less expensive;
• The descriptions of the shoes are so generic (e.g. "built for the neutral, biomechanically efficient runner who wants to go fast") that they provide little guidance. Is that for a mid-foot striker? Heel striker? Marathoner? Occasional runner? High-mileage? What neutral runner doesn't want to go fast?
• The Ghost turns out to be a half-inch shorter than the Burn or the Summon. What's that? Surely they can make shoes the right size. Did they do that so that the shoes would seem just a little lighter when compared size-for-size? Anyway the Summon appears to be sized correctly.

Brooks is probably no worse than any of the other companies, but the prize will go to the company that really is customer-centric.

By the way, I wrote to Brooks to get more guidance and was told that the Summon would not be similar to the Burn at all. I was encouraged to wait for the Launch, another new model to be introduced in July. But since the Launch isn't here, I bought the Summons anyway.

So far I've run less than a mile in them. I'll probably post a little more when I have some real miles on them, but that will be a few weeks at least.

If you have a question or an opinion about these shoes, please do leave a comment. Thank you.