Weight watchers watch: I lost 4. something pounds this week. I was actually pretty surprised about it. I think the 10 miler last Friday and the 4 miler I did before weigh in helped. Is that cheating? I say no, it's a little "help."
So, I have fallen into the minimalist running fad. I'm usually pretty strong about staying away from fads and hip stuff, but the minimalist movement is too strong for me. I blame this on the book Born To Run, by Christoper McDougal. If you know it, bear with me. But it's a story about a journalist who travels to Mexico and meets with an white guy who is trying to preserve and help the tribes of the Copper Canyons. These Tarahumara are super athletes and ultra runners respectfully who have been running in sandals or barefoot their whole life. Without going too much into the story, there are sections in the book about basically how bad shoes are to you and blah blah blah. Now I don't agree with the argument that shoes are necessarily bad, but I do want to explore the minimalist type of running shoes and see if it could benefit me in some ways.
That being said, I was looking at purchasing a pair of Saucony Kinvaras. I have a few friends who use them, and some of the podcasters I listen to like them and haven't heard any bad things about them. I have put purchasing the shoes on the back burner because, I am still skeptical and I didn't have $90 sitting around. Plus it was hard to justify replacing my old shoes that have less than 200 miles on them. Well finally, I got some overtime at work and I began to look around for a pair. The only ones I could find at the moment were a pair for $100 at Fleet Feet, Columbia SC. The only color that was available for my size 13 boats was the vizi-pro orange. I could not bring myself to purchase the orange shoes. I am not a fan of neon anything and I couldn't wear something that was all orange (Clemson-Carolina thing, some might understand). My search continued and I found another pair of orange Kinvaras at Dick's Sporting goods. They were $10 off and a $30 difference from fleet feet. I tried them on, and ran on them. My 3 year old son, who was with me, thought I was playing while I was running. He said "Chase me daddy," and we he was off. There I was with shoes that I have not paid for, running down the aisle toward the front door. My son thought it was fun, the very large employee at the front door did not think it was quite as fun. Fortunately I caught my child, returned to the shoe area, boxed the shoes up and made the purchase. I know I said I wouldnt' wear orange, but I'm cheap and can't pass a deal up like that.
When I got home I showed Cindy my new shoes. She was none too happy when I showed her the orange shoes. I though her being a Clemson fan, she would like the bright orange Las Vegas Neon Sign style shoes. No, she was unhappy that I bought something that I wasn't happy with 2 days prior. Oh well, I got my some Kinvaras and I was happy.
Later that night, just for smiles and giggles, I went to runningwarehouse.com to check out their prices. They had no Kinvaras but they did have some Kinvara 2's. The price on the screen said $90.00, add to cart to see price. I added a pair of grey, black and orange Kinvara 2's to the cart. To my surprise, not only were they cheaper than my out of date Kinvaras, but they were way cheaper, I'm talking $30 cheaper. So I did what every logical man would do, I bought the shoes from running warehouse and returned the orange things to the store. I am now awaiting my shoes to arrive in the mail. I will write about them at a later date.
Well hope all is going well with you all. Keep on running, enjoy that beer and have fun.
