Running shoes again, and a crabby adenda

It's time for me to start thinking about new training flats. The pair I’m wearing are fine, but they are the last of the multiple pairs I bought the last time I ordered. I used to buy all my shoes from one of two small shops owned by runners, but I got dissatisfied for a variety of reasons, and now generally order online, buying multiple pairs of the “last year’s” model of the Asics GT I’ve been wearing for years.

RoadRunner Sports puts shoes into categories: “Neutral,” “Stability,” and “Motion Control.” I’ve never paid attention to this, because I knew what shoe I wanted. This time, though, I thought I might want to try something a little lighter, a little quicker-feeling. So I perused the catalogue. The first thing I noticed was that my shoes are classified as “Stability”—explained basically as significant cushioning and some motion control for runners with medium arches. I wear orthotics, so I thought perhaps “Neutral” shoes—for runners with high arches, with less motion control, and some cushioning—might be better because my motion control in theory is already handled by my orthotics.

I got on the phone, had a chat with one of the “fit experts” on the other end (always polite and almost always helpful, in my limited experience with them). He confirmed my theory. So now I have a question to answer for myself. Do I leave the shoes that I’ve had a long and happy relationship with but are feeling increasingly dowdy, for a fling with some sexy new Neutral? I may have to go into counseling.

In actually perusing the catalogue, though, rather than simply calling and ordering the usual model, I noticed something that surprised me: A lot of these shoes are sold on the basis of a soft ride. As in, “The men's ASICS® GEL-Cumulus® has long been a favorite of runners wanting pillowy comfort at a great price.” Comfort? Yes, I suppose so, in the sense of no problems, but pillowy comfort? You can have it. I don’t want to sink into my shoes, because I don’t want to waste my increasingly rare and precious energy. I want some protection, of course, but I want to feel the road.

I bought a pair of Nike’s first air-cushioned flats (“Tailwinds,” I think they were called) in the late ’70s, and hated them for sucking away energy. I’ve tried a few other models, including the late, unlamented Air Huaraches (early ’90s), and haven’t changed my mind. In fact, I think gradually increasing “pillowyness” may be one of the reasons I’m becoming less happy with my Asics GTs.


A related article appeared in the New York Times the other day, largely covering issues that have been the subject of a number of recent articles elsewhere. It included this explanation of the development of the modern running shoe:

Things changed in the early 1970s, when Bill Bowerman, a track coach turned entrepreneur, created a cushioned running shoe that allowed runners to take longer strides and land on their heels, rather than a more natural mid- or forefoot strike. Mr. Bowerman and his business partner, Phil Knight, marketed the new shoes under the Nike brand, and the rest is history.

Yeah, bad history. The first Nikes were essentially Tigers (now Asics), Bill Bowerman was “a” track coach as Babe Ruth was “a” ballplayer, the waffle sole he invented wasn’t more cushioning than what had come before (it offered more traction and arguably lasted longer). Any training flat of the late ’60s and early ’70s (by then, the best were, in fact, Tigers) would have let any runner clomp down on his heels if he wanted to. There weren’t all that many runners on the roads then, and most of them were training competitively, and they weren’t heel-strikers. Now most runners are (like me) too heavy and are often horrifically imperfect biomechanically. We run slooow. Try that perfect, fleeting, midfoot strike at nine or 10 minutes a mile. Good luck.

But those wiggly-toe shoes look so cool....

Running shoes

I just broke out a new pair of training flats. Big news, huh?

I used to use up a pair of these every six or seven weeks, when they wore down and out after about 400 miles. Now I just wear them and wear them and wear them, since mileage is hardly an issue. I left a pair in Minnesota, though, so I could use them when I go back in a few weeks, and I had to break out some new ones.

For a long time, I’ve been running in Asics GTs. (The numbers change—I think they’re up to GT-2130s now—but the shoe, thankfully, remains essentially the same. Slightly clunky, but not too heavy, not overly “controlled,” not overly “stable,” not overly cushioned.) I buy them by the half-dozen pairs (old models when the new models are introduced) in the certain knowledge that they will be, as I heard it put lately, “obsoleted” some day when I’m not looking. I ritualistically pull out the cheap supplied innersoles, slip in a set of simple green Spencos and my own inserts, and there we are.

I began running cross-country in Puma racing flats (size 8-1/2), which would now be seen as closer to running barefoot than to any modern shoe, before switching to the original red-and-white, ripple-soled New Balances (size 7-1/2). I raced on the track in the blue Adidas Tokyos (size 9-1/2) that were probably the most popular spikes of that late-cinder-track era. And I trained mostly in green-striped white Adidas Italias (size 9). (Or were they Romas? How odd I can’t be sure.) [Much later: Italias.] These shoes, all of them among the best available in the mid-to-late ’60s, were necessary evils for me, and I spent a lot of time not running. Our trainer labored heroically on arch cookies and all sorts of tape jobs, but in vain. I was eventually diagnosed with anterior compartment syndrome.

(Time out: This reminds me of something amusing. I had to shave my legs below the knees to be taped, and the trainer would spray on Cramer Tuf-Skin to make the tape really adhere. Tuf-Skin over time would turn your leg green unless you scrubbed it off with rubbing alcohol (surgical meths), which I naturally considered a waste of time. So I spent my late teens and early twenties with stubbly green legs. I looked like a diseased tomato vine.)

For a few years I puttered around in very light Tigers (now Asics), which were cheap and not bad. In the mid-’70s, I discovered orthotics and Lydiard-style long-distance training. I also discovered that shoes were vastly improved. And vastly more expensive. Why, some cost more than $30!

Starting with some blue New Balance 320s, I moved to yellow waffle-soled Nike LDVs for training, and Nike Elites for road racing (all size 9—amazing standardization!). Nike design and my needs diverged somewhere back in the ’80s, and I’ve been in Asics ever since (though I still sometimes call them Tigers). My racing shoes these days? Surely you jest.

Last year, I was given several sets of Lock Laces, which you might be able to make out in the photo. I never would have bought these for myself, because they seemed like gimmicks. But I love them. Essentially, they are small-diameter shock cord and special two-hole cord locks. They let you lever yourself quickly into the shoe, which I really like, but best, their stretchy nature keeps pressure off my very high instep while keeping the shoe on snugly. Nifty.

Shoe-ba-doo-ba-doo

I need to decide what do with this little pile of run-out running shoes.

I’ve stripped them of my Spencos (those green innersoles on the bench) and my LockLaces, and replaced their original inners and laces, and have been hoping to find someone who will see that they are put to good use. The problem is that, although they don’t especially look it the photo, they are utterly clapped out inside, especially around the heel counter. I can’t even walk in them without a little discomfort. In other words, they would only be useful to people with a great need and no other solution. There are people in that awful condition in the world, but I don’t know how to reach them. Most collecting agencies specify “gently used.” I know I could give them to Nike to turn into running track surfaces and such, but I’m not all that fond of Nike, and I’d rather find another solution.

*

I used to keep all my old shoes in a box, which became a series of boxes, and I remember bringing representative samples to a talk I was once asked to give about running. I was able to present the development of the running flat from the early ’60s to 1980 or so when the event took place. (Riveting stuff, huh? I’ve always known how to hold an audience.)

I eventually realized the absurdity of maintaining a personal museum of historic footwear and trashed the dozens of pairs that had accumulated. I wish now that I’d held out a pair of each type. It’s hard for even me to believe the things we ran in.

The Trackster in the linked article is actually an updated version of this ripple-soled beauty, which didn’t come out until the late ’60s, and was definitely the best cross-country shoe available at that time. I started out in something much more like the shoe above it, and passed through some essentially throw-away Pumas before upgrading. I also had some of those Lydiards, which were actually made in Germany and were very good for early-’70s shoes; a few pairs of those Tigers (and an earlier version with a less structured heel); three pairs of the New Balance 320s before moving on to Nike LDVs; and a single pair of those god-awful Nike Air Huaraches, for the design, production, and marketing of which someone should have been prosecuted.

The Sam sandal

Last summer, H, A, and I decided to do the Hancock Loop, north of the Kancamagus Highway. North and South Hancock (technically, I think, the north and south peaks of Mt. Hancock) are 4,000-footers. The trailhead is right at the hairpin curve that is so prominent toward the west end of the Kanc.


This is a wet walk, with lots of brook crossings, and at a substantial wade a few miles in, I shucked my trail runners, tied their laces together, and barefooted daintily across with them draped around my neck.

With me on the other side, H decided to toss her shoes the 20-30 feet across the swift-moving stream. As she wound up for a good overhand heave, I suggested that she make the throw underhand for better control. She, of course, always takes fatherly advice (which is to say she generally humors the old man), so she began again. Back swung her arm, then forward, and the shoe, catching oddly on the end of a finger, flew almost straight up in the air, and to the sound of three people bleating “Oh, noooo!” plunged into the churning water. It briefly caught an eddy on my side, but I couldn’t get to it because the bank was too steep. Off it went like an unruddered boat, sluicing downriver with me chasing it on one side and A on the other, while H hopped around emitting sounds of disgust and dismay. I quickly ran cursing into an impenetrable wall of underbrush, but A swiftly disappeared downstream, shadowing the runaway footwear as it plunged through minor rapids and occasionally paused tantalizingly in small eddies.

I scrambled back across the stream, and with H limping alongside, headed downriver to see what success A might have had. No joy. He returned empty-handed from the rougher water downstream. So here we were, several miles from the trailhead, with six feet and five shoes. The walking wasn’t too rough by White Mountain standards, but it wasn’t verdant greensward, either. We agreed A should continue over the peaks, while I would slowly walk H back out to the road. She began by keeping a sock on her shoeless right foot, and I thought we would switch when she needed a break—she could slip one of my shoes on, and I would go socky for a while, and so forth.

But when the time came for a change, H had a better idea. An EMT with a certain amount of experience in the woods, she always carries a Sam Splint in the bottom of her pack. She pulled it out, rummaged in her first aid kit for a triangular bandage, and with a little trial and error, created this elegant sandal that saw her comfortably out.


This does not, of course, mean that she avoided being teased mercilessly. Hey, nice arm, kid!

Pluck your magic twanger, Froggy

The phrase is from a 1950s kiddie show sponsored by Buster Brown shoes and hosted first by Smilin’ Ed McConnell and then, more famously, by Andy Devine. At some point in every program Ed or Andy would wander over to a box on a table and chant the magic words, bringing forth the sound of a broken guitar string, a puff of smoke and Froggy, a malicious spirit who would croak, “Hi ya kids, hi ya, hi ya!”, before going on to say or do (or to get someone else to say or do) something devilish.


“Pluck your magic twanger” passes through my mind much more often than I’d like it to, because it’s the first non-expletive that presents itself when I tweak some once-reliable body part. The magic twanger that was plucked last week was my left achilles, which actually hasn’t been reliable for decades, but of which I am always deeply solicitous. My only explanation is that Froggy did it, the little bastard. I’m back to walking now, but won’t be able to shuffle for a few weeks, at best.

Which leads me to this recent article in the New York Times about running in the lousy winter weather that’s on the horizon: how to make yourself do it and why you should. (I love the Times. “My coach, Tom Fleming...” was one of the best American marathoners of the ’70s, and a two-time winner of the New York Marathon, back when it was run around and around Central Park. Like many runners in those days, we trained in the same shoes, New Balance 320s.)


Unlike some of those quoted in the article, I’ve never thought of any of my winter runs as “epic,” merely &^%$#@! cold and slippery, but I have always enjoyed running in slop for two reasons: it makes me feel deliciously smug, and it feels so great to finish, pull off the wet sweaties, climb into a hot shower, and eventually emerge into the world clean, warm, and virtuous. Unless Froggy has made me forget to tape my nipples.

Splish-splash

I’ve always loved running in the rain. Summer evening, nothing but shorts and shoes, cruising along warm and cool at the same time, feeling like superman. Or so I seem to recall.

Yesterday evening, at the end of a drizzly day, the four of us (H, J the W, sweet B in her rolling pod, and I), headed out for a little shuffle, and just as we left home the clouds burst above us. This was no summer superman rain, however. This was more of a Scottish rain, huge drops of some bitter cold heavy substance with that little extra propulsive force a good wind can provide. If it were in Scotland, and you were walking rather than running, you might say it was a Paramo rain.

But it was also a rain I was sharing with H, my favorite running companion, and we both knew B was wheeling along warm and dry. Jasper? I think he prefers it this way. So we had a fine time regardless. The only real drawback, not discovered until this morning, was that both H and I forgot to take the usual steps to make sure our shoes dried overnight. A wet and cold start for our tootsies today.

Not barefoot in the park

Finally, an intelligent article on this whole running shoes-don’t-really-help thing. It’s very true that when you’re fit and light and biomechanically adequate—let’s just say when you’re young and genetically fortunate—that running barefoot is wonderful. As a kid, when I had to run short and fast, I always stripped off my shoes. Picnic and schoolyard sprints, touch football, that kind of stuff. Oh, that wonderful lifting fleetness I now experience only in memory.

But the idea that modern, urban, middle-aged fitness runners—creaky, heavy, biomechanically inefficient—would be better off slogging their miles in naked tootsies is bizarrely absurd. “Three to five miles on the streets of Cambridge, completely barefoot,” might work out for a particular Harvard professor, but would pretty much guarantee a sudden epidemic of strained achilles tendons if the rest of us took it up, not to mention wonky knees and hips and the inevitable cuts, scrapes, and bruises. (Barefoot on city streets? I’m tempted to say, “are you insane?”—but this is a Harvard professor.)

The article, in this morning’s New York Times, finally talks sense and gets it right, I think.

Hints of spring and pleasant running

I had my first nice-weather shuffle of the year yesterday. It will get cold and snowy again before spring really arrives, but we’re all beginning to get that annual feeling that winter will, finally, eventually, one of these days, not too many weeks from now, play itself out.

I broke out these new shoes to mark the occasion. They’re an old an unexciting model of workhorse training flat, but possessing a Fred Astaire-like sense of grace and style, I accessorized them with the fluorescent yellow LockLaces. Elegant, I’m sure you’ll agree.

I also tried a new pair of shorts, which I actually bought for their little pockets—meant for the GU or similar energy-boosting goodies carried by trail runners, but perfect for a shuffling old man’s specs and emergency flares. An unlooked-for feature is a sort of boxer liner rather than a brief. This is supposedly to reduce chafing, always a good thing, but they seem to do at the price of making you feel that your knickers are in a twist. Not necessarily a great trade-off. My form is unattractive enough already.

Finally, I plunged for the lighter shoes mentioned in the post linked above—the red ones. But their lesser heel-lift has left my left achilles arching its eyebrow in that Gallic way tendons have, and I’ve set them aside at least until I’m better stretched out and the weather is truly hot. They may turn out to be permanently aspirational. Or do you think they might just need yellow laces?

Footsie

After some wrong-address faffing about (I’m actually not in Rochester, Minnesota this winter), I received a couple of new pairs of running shoes yesterday. I mentioned some time ago that I’ve stopped regularly patronizing the two more-or-less local running shops I had sequentially given my business to. One began taking me for granted; its service became perfunctory. The other had assumed from the start that this chubby old guy must be entirely ignorant of the sport. I’m not sure which was more annoying. At any rate, I am now a satisfied customer of RoadRunner Sports.

With this order, I took two steps forward and one step back (in time, at least). First, along with the shoes, I ordered a new reflective vest for early-morning shuffling. This Nathan Streak is vastly better than the ancient, stiff old thing from the ’70s that I’ve been using.


It’s got velcro attachments instead of tie cords (which inevitably came untied), and it’s really light and flexible. I won’t even know I’m wearing it. Cars, I hope, will.

I’m on something of a shoe quest. I’m hoping to find something a little less elderly-feeling that still protects my aging dogs (and ankles, and knees, and legs, and hips, and back...). My second step forward, the Asics Speedstar 4 is a lighter, less padded, trainer that may turn out to be more shoe (or should I say less shoe?) than I can handle at this stage of life. But, although red and black is not exactly me (though I’ve worn worse), I want to try something a little lighter and firmer on my feet. We’ll see.


The step back is a pair of Asics’ obsolete but decent (for me) GT 2110, an earlier, somehow less ploddy-feeling model of the 2030s I’m wearing, but not enjoying, now. One of the good things about RoadRunner is that they seem to maintain a large supply of runners’ former favorites.


So now it’s on to the usual new-shoe ritual: stripping out the cheap supplied innersoles; replacing them with simple Spenco slip-ins (to be topped by my orthotics at shuffle time); lacing up a pair of LockLaces, the gimmick that ain’t; and shuffling the whole package out to the nearest mud puddle or pile of mung to anoint them.

The best thing of all is that H will be here by the middle of this coming week, and I’ll be able to test these new platforms out with her. Even a disaster will be a joy.

The ongoing wonderfulness of iChat

There was a crew of us here tonight to enjoy an especially engaging sweet B: grandparents, great-grandfather, and great-godparents (if that isn’t a thing, it should be). She called each of us by name, modeled her new shoes, demonstrated her growing vocabulary, instructed her dada in pasta-making, essayed Opposites, drank milk from her mama’s glass, and demonstrated how to stretch an elastic cord while holding one end in your teeth, a skill that can’t be practiced too often.

Some of us will get to see her (and her mama and dada) next weekend, but for now, thank goodness for iChat!

Geezer redux

I haven’t posted for over a year. Stuff happens.

One more bit of stuff that’s going to happen in the next few weeks is that I’ll be posting again, but on a new platform at a new address. I’m not sure if I’ll be changing the blog’s title. “The Geriatric Review” has been suggested. Either way, I hope and think it will look nicer and be more stable and easy to use. I honestly don’t know what direction the whole enterprise will take, but both of you can expect the standard jibbering cogitation. I’ll post appropriate info when I have it.

Anyway, I’m still here, and I’m still working on my office. Most of the books (160 baseball titles alone to the Wesleyan University Library book sale), and lots of the files and papers are gone, along with most of the random detritus. But here’s a partial list of items I just pulled out of corners and drawers, or off the back of bookcases.

• Five baseballs, all decades old. Two used, two autographed, one pristine. 
• A rubber gizmo used to keep cross-country skis together. (You need two for the system to work.)
• A yarmulke. I used to carry one in a pocket of each of my sport and suit jackets. You never know….
• A tiny fielder’s mitt my grandfather tossed into my crib in 1948.
• A single bronzed bookend from the late 1920s, made from one of my mother’s baby shoes. The other one’s around here somewhere….
• My dad’s Wilson 1940-vintage Ellsworth Vines tennis racket, in its press. Your ad!
• A Speedy Stitcher sewing awl, “… a handy tool to have around the house, farm or any place where heavy material has to be sewn.” I think I may actually have used it. Once.
• A 1928 YMCA Checker Championship trophy won by my mother’s father.
• A small wooden music box that plays “Stardust,” a wedding gift to my parents in 1945.
• Three inflating needles, used in decades past mostly for basketballs, but occasionally for the random soccer ball or baby gizmo.
• An Ace bandage wrapped in a length of well-greyed adhesive tape. I’m pretty sure this came home from college with me in the summer of 1966.
• And, best of all in a way, a small, tattered, fake stuffed bird that was given to me, for reasons I no longer remember, by friends on my 21st birthday, and has been hanging off of a series of study and office lamps ever since.

What do I do with all this? You can have the needles, the ski thingy, the yarmulke, the Ace, and maybe the awl, but what can I do with the rest? It’s family history. Maybe I’ll start a museum.

Phew, glad that’s over with

I’m cleaning out my closet. Among the dustballs, I scrabbled up a small blue duffel. At one time, it held my competition kit—racing shoes and a few things to handle the usual pre- and post-race issues. Over the years, it’s become running-related dead storage: My college singlet; the heavy, old fashioned (even in 1969), and unattractive sweats they let me keep because they’d finally gotten new ones during my senior year; a singlet from the Charlottesville Track Club, which I wore in most of my post-college racing; no fewer than three pairs of SportHills of much later date; one of those ancient, scratchy Helly-Hansen polypro turtlenecks, red with the dashes up the arms, certainly older than my daughter; a pair of folding scissors; a cotton “good luck” turtleneck, now more holes than fabric, that I remember buying at The Indian Shop in Hanover in 1965; a give-away visor from an event long, long ago, and some partial rolls of adhesive tape.

I’m sentimentally attached to the uniform stuff. The folding scissors still cut. Good luck is hard to find. I think H and/or A might be able to use the SportHills. The Helly-Hanson goes in the local clothes box. I can’t make up my mind about the visor. But I’m ruthlessly disposing of the 30-year-old tape.

Grete Waitz, R.I.P.

Barrier breaker, great champion, class act. When she crossed the line to win her first NYC Marathon, no one knew who she was.

“When she ran that first New York race, she had never run more than 13 miles. She and Jack ate a most unusual dinner on the eve of the race: shrimp cocktail, filet mignon, baked potato and ice cream, with a bottle of red wine. Waitz later told the story that she felt as if she were flying through the first 16 miles, but the final 10 miles felt as if she had a bag of cement strapped to her back. She considered abandoning the race somewhere in the Bronx, but, as she recalled, ‘I didn’t know where I was, and I had to get back to Jack.’

“When she crossed the finish line, exhausted, and setting a world record, she took off her shoes and threw them at her husband. ‘I’ll never do this stupid thing again!’ she yelled at him.” 

She was only 57.

What was that?

I've been seeing delightfully more of a great good friend lately, and that’s inevitably reminded me of a trip he and I took into the Sierra in, I think, the late ’80s. I have no idea all these years later exactly where we were, but we’d stopped in a small town to buy some food, then driven to a trailhead and climbed into the those gorgeous mountains for a few hours to a granite ringed lake we had all to ourselves. Nothing to do but alternately splash in the frigid water and lounge on the warm rock. This remains my personal version of California Dreamin’.

After dinner and a long twilight, we tossed our bags down onto ensolite pads and turned in on a clear spot between the lake and the brush. Clear sky, a million stars, predictable profundities, drowsiness, sleep.

Until….

My eyes snap open. P struggles to sit up. I just lie, eyes wide, frozen. Tremendous noises behind us. Brush being shoved aside, branches snapping, heavy movement.

My first befuddled thought was: Moose. Then, atavistically: Bear. Then, within seconds, as the brain actually started to process what my ears were hearing: Horse. Hoof-like thuds back in the undergrowth. More crashing. More snapping, more loud rhythmic beats. Gradually, over a minute or two, the cacophony moved away and faded out of hearing.

What the HELL was that? Yes, possibly a horse or mule, but how and why loose out here in the middle of the night? Possibly, we decided, a big ruminant. They might make hoof sounds like that. We were clearly under no real threat. Our guesses degenerated. Wolf wearing hiking boots. Cougar in tap shoes. Escaped convict. Yeti. And so to sleep.

In the morning, nothing. We could find no evidence whatsoever of anything crashing around in the bushes. We still debate what woke us up. These days I lean toward Boris Karloff on walking holiday.

Puddle jumping

We had a lovely light rain overnight, and it was still coming tenaciously down early this morning. This is the kind of weather I most love to run in. In the cemetery, the big puddle we call Lake H covered the path and I splashed merrily through.

Every time I do this I think of a day when H was still a littlish girl and we’d been out getting damp together. The driveway of our house in those days had, off to its side, a depression that filled temptingly after every rain.


As we walked past it on this day, I jumped into it with both feet, throwing up a sheet of water that soaked her already damp legs and shoes. She, naturally, leapt in to repay me in kind, and we spend a loud and happy minute laughing and stamping and dancing and making sure the other was thoroughly wet through. The memory has been good for a smile and a chuckle ever since—a joy I can summon just by getting my feet wet.

Kit

My kit is my kit...pretty well sorted out over the years. Not super lightweight, but put together with comfortable walking over difficult and varied terrain very much in mind. Depending on how much food and water I have aboard, I’ll be carrying 18-25 lb. (8-11 kg.) The only significant clothing element still up in the air is raingear. I’m concerned about the kind of chilly multi-day downpour Scotland has occasionally been known to produce, and I’m wondering weather to stick with my Marmot Precip or to go with a Paramo-style top. I’ve gotten thoughtful advice in both directions, and I change my mind weekly. I think I’ll be fussing with this for a few months yet.

And ticks. I’m worried about ticks. Most impressed by reports of “tick infested” campsites. My father was knocked out late last year by a tick-born illness called ehrlichiosis, and he spent a very nasty couple of weeks, and a long time recovering. I usually walk in shorts down to about 40° F (4° C.) or so, but because of the little bloodsuckers, this is perhaps not a great idea, especially in the west. My seldom-used long trousers are RailRiders, and my rainpants, which I pull on even less often, are light, full-zip Red Ledges. I may just stick with the tried and true, but I’m contemplating Cascadas to cover both bases (and, most likely, both legs).

We’ve been using Stephenson Warmlite tents since the early ’70s. Once, when we lived near London for a while, we took a coach with a club up to the Lakes, piling out into a dark and soggy farm field late on a chilly and very wet night, and were comfortably snuggled in our sleeping bags in about five minutes flat. We lay there emitting self-congratulatory giggles until the hammering and invective of our soaked fellow campers ceased some considerable time later. The Warmlite 2, which then was actually called the Warmlite 6, has always been a quick, taut pitch, sturdy in winds, and extraordinarily roomy for its weight. Very hard to beat. I’ve got a fairly new one now, even lighter, and it will be my shelter from Mallaig to the east coast. (Mine’s a nameless model 2, similar to Gayle E Bird’s Wendy, and unlike Alan Sloman’s famous Wanda, which (who?) is a shorter and lighter model 2C, a recent innovation designed for climbers who often have less room for pitching.)

I’ve been sleeping in the same Feathered Friends Swallow for a long time, too. It’s rated to 20° F. (-7° C.), weighs 2 lb. (900 g.), stuffs pretty small, and will keep me cozy.

I carry a McHale 0-SARC pack—comfortable, sturdy, and light enough. It claims 3,000 cu. in. (50 l.), but it’s clearly got more volume than that. I use a couple of hip-belt pockets for things like reading glasses, kerchief, lip balm, and camera. Did I say the pack is comfortable?

Little else of interest, just the usual mundanities. I’ll probably mention a few in future posts.

Oh, shoes. I used to wear Limmers, big, heavy, classic mountain boots beautifully built in New Hampshire for walking the steep and rocky trails of the White Mountain National Forest. I’ve gradually moved to lighter and lighter footwear, and will probably show up in Scotland in a pair of Montrail Hardrocks. I used Vitesses on the Tour du Mont Blanc in 2006, and they were fine once I paired them up with appropriate sox (my light running anklets were not so hot). But they’re hard to find now, and I’ve been walking in Hardrocks. They’ll do.

Does anyone recognize the location in the blister-easing photo above?

Yuck

Today’s morning walk was a moderate version of the crummiest kind of New England winter weather…temps around freezing, “winter mix” falling, cars encrusted, a little dicey under foot. Public Works (headed by a high school classmate who held our discus record, since broken but not by much) does a good job on the roads, but the drives through the cemetery don’t get the same kind of attention. At the bottom of that slope, there is a depression that tends to catch and hold water. I was on my own this morning, but my usual walking partner, Paul, and I have christened it “Lake H,” in honor of my daughter, who as a young runner got immense pleasure out of the otherwise illicit act of splashing messily through it. The caretakers have filled it in a bit with crushed stone, but it still becomes something of a pond when it rains. Not paying attention this morning, I managed to walk right into the middle of it, and immediately felt my walking shoes let in what felt like every icy drop they could hold. When you’re running, or even walking with some purpose, you don’t care much about this sort of thing. When you’re gathering wool while spending iPod time on a tropical island with Jack Aubrey and Steven Maturin, you do. Killick! Killick there!

Those boots weren’t made for walkin’

A day or two after I wrote the post about settling on the Montrail Cirrus boots, I began to feel some pain in my feet. I realized immediately that despite all my sock-experimentation and precision lacing, these boots were not going to work for nine hours a day for two weeks. I’ll spare you a description of the ensuing rant. I’ve been buying specialty shoes for decades, mostly training flats, but hiking boots, too, and I know deep in my bones (which is where it hurts) that you never, never, never buy a new model without trying it on and using it as much as possible before purchase. Never.

Never.

A foolish consistency is certainly the hobgoblin of little minds, but the key word in Emerson’s epigram is “foolish.” And there is nothing foolish about never buying a running shoe or hiking boot you haven’t worn enough to be sure of. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

All right. As you can tell, I’ve put all that behind me. And I did spare you the description of the ensuing rant.

Now I need a new pair of boots—boots to accommodate a high arch, the resulting high volume foot, and my orthotics. Off I went Monday to the new REI in West Hartford, and tried on a few pairs, none of which suited. But I had liked the general feel of a weird-looking pair of Keen Targhees that were a half-size too small. They didn’t have in stock the next size up, but they were able to order it for me and have it delivered (the next day!) to my house. The deal was the usual: that I could return the boots if they didn’t work out, as long as I only walked indoors with them. Fair enough.

On my way home, covering all bases, I stopped at the EMS back down I-84, and found a pair of Merrill Radius Mids I liked. I took them home on the same basis. Yesterday and today I’ve been wearing both pairs around the house. (As I write, I’ve got a Merrill on my left foot and a Keen on my right.)


They both feel good, and I think either would be okay. They are both priced at $120, but I can get the Keens for 20% off as part of a seasonal REI membership sale. The Keens are also lighter (about a pound each, as opposed to about a pound and a half). They use eVent rather than GoreTex. The Merrills are more traditional looking (don’t care), and give the impression of being sturdier, no small consideration. Right now, I’m leaning Keenward, but I haven’t decided for sure.

Happy trails again

Paul and I are back to walking together every morning. Here he is, strolling through dry-at-the-moment Lake H. I’d been away, and he’d been sequentially cosmopolizing and under the weather.

It’s been chilly the last few mornings—just about at freezing, but today was warm enough for both of us to strip down to short sleeves about half-way through.

An oddity: When I run, I seldom get debris in my shoes. When I walk, I’m always gathering tiny pebbles from the cemetery roadways. (Maybe I just run too fast...uh, no, scratch that.) Anyway, I often plonk down on this bench to empty out the grotch.


Woodbury has three cemeteries: Old South, which has been in use since the 1600s and sees very few new burials (a few family plots); Old North, which shows in the background above and came into use in the late 1700s I think; and New North, across the road, with graves from the mid-late 1800s. New North was expanded into the field next to it a few years ago, and is where we walk a loop in the morning, and where I often run a couple, too.

When I was a boy (oof, there’s that deadly introductory clause again), we’d often gather to play baseball at the nearby schoolyard, where, for some reason the powers that were always turned off the water bubbler during the summer. When we needed a break, we’d adjourn to the pipe stand faucet in New North—not a bad deal, since we could get our whole heads under it.

Reaching for the sunny side

Bummer. Big rains and wind predicted for Friday have squelched a walk we had planned along the South Taconic Trail, across Alander Mountain, to Bash Bish Falls.  (Too bad we hadn’t planned on it today...it’s been one of those glorious, perfect New England fall days than which there is nothing more lovely—I’ve been out for a run and three short walks.)

The sunny side (and this is a real reach) is that I’ll get to try out my new shuffling shell in “conditions.” It’s an REI OXT Airflyte, 

my first-ever garment of eVent, a waterproof/breathable fabric many people whose opinions I value rave about (and, even at half-price, the most expensive running item I’ve ever bought, barring shoes). The deal is that the stuff is supposed to be truly waterproof, truly breathable, and lightweight—a nice combo that would obviously be great in the mountains, too. Here’s a review from Backpacker. And here’s a cool little demo:



The Airflyte has no hood, which is fine with me, because I don’t like running in one, and does have a little iPod pocket high on the left breast, with a way to run the ear bud cord up inside the jacket. This might be nice or a pain. I’ll find out Friday morning, when I try to make the lemonade of discovery out of the lemons of disappointment. I’ll be humming as I splash along.

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side,
Keep on the sunny side of life
It will help us ev’ry day, it will brighten all the way
If we’ll keep on the sunny side of life