Lunas v.s. Hokas

Sometime after our Arizona/Utah road trip last October I managed to inflame my peroneus brevis tendon attachment to the fifth metatarsal bone and this thnig has been dogging me ever since.  I took an entire month off running and tried natural (Hammer Tissue Rejuvenator & Scott Jurek’s Starburst Anti-Inflamatory Smoothie) remedies as well as good old Vitamin-I  with little success.  X-Rays show no stress fracture and I really did not want to do the course of oral steroids that were prescribed so I just took it easy.   After a month I was going crazy and began using a Precor Open Stride machine at the gym to keep up aerobic conditioning without impact.  Then I began running again and I  noticed that it really didn’t get any worse running or any better not running so I started working back up to an average 5 mile daily run.

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Last year I had wanted to do a snowshoe event after having to run in my snowshoes a few times locally but one thing led to another and I never made it.   This year when the Snowdog Events calendar was announced I registered right away for the Jingle Bells run to be held at the Sun Country Golf Course outside of Cle Elum.  I figured it would be a great way to wrap up the racing season since I had to miss the Deception Pass 25k due to injury.  Since my foot tendon is still giving me a bit of grief I registered for the 5k run figuring I could endure 5k of pretty much anything while 10k could be a bit much still since I haven’t gone more than 4 miles on trail or machine for months. Continue reading →

Start of Dash Point Marathon - photo by Steve Sanders

I ran the half marathon last year at Dash Point and remember it being harder than it should have been given the specs of the run.  This year I decided to sign up for the full marathon anyway because it fit in my schedule at about the time I would be ready for a marathon.  We previewed the course  the week before and, again, I found it harder than it seemed like it should have been.  Four laps, each with about 650′ of elevation gain shouldn’t be that hard but this course has stairs, log steps, some very steep short sections and no piece of straight trail longer than about 30 yards so it is indeed harder than it ‘should’ be.    I also wasn’t totally sure I would be able to finish as one day in my taper I did a 4 mile/2600′ climb that caused my left hip to hurt like crazy.  I decided to just take a full week off running, do a light run to be sure I wasn’t in pain and then go for it figuring I could drop out at the half point if needed.

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Last year the Cougar Half (OK, let’s call it what it is – the Cougar 13.7 mile) was one of the harder runs I’d done, harder even than the Watershed Marathon.  I remember getting to the final aid station around the time I expected to be done and finding I had three more miles and one more grueling climb to deal with, it was a bit disheartening.  I vowed not to do it again.

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Nearing the finish - photo by Yumay Chang

It was Thursday and I had to run anyway so why not sign up for the Evergreen Trail Runs Soaring Eagle event that evening.  After running 11+ tough miles on Tuesday at Rattlesnake I decided the 5-mile option was definitely a good choice for distance and with the dry weather and Soaring Eagle not being a mud-hole the Luna Leadvilles would finally be perfect there.   In fact, there were three people wearing Luna sandals at the event including Scott from Luna who I had met at the factory.

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At the top of the 15k

I was going to be in SoCal the for a few weeks in early July so I decided to look up a trail run to do in place of the Cougar 10-mile event on the 7th.   The Harding Hustle fit the bill perfectly, about the same distance at 9.3 miles but with more elevation at 2400′ plus it was going to be HOT instead of running in the rain like I had been doing.  The plan was to run it with Catherine’s cousin Tony but he came up with an injury and had to pull out but I decided to go ahead and do the run myself.

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Today was the second event in the Scott Cougar Mountain Series.  At least they called it an 8-mile event this year since last year it was billed as 7.5 miles, it is really 8.2 miles.  Christian and I volunteered together doing parking duty today and ran together again on what turned out to be a pretty perfect morning for running with cool temps and only a very light shower. Trails were in good shape throughout after a few mostly dry days in the area.   I opted for Merrell Trail Gloves on my feet just in case the rains came on hard like at Grand Ridge, did not want another slippery sandal incident.

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Finish after an hour of rain, still smiling.

I had plans for June 5 that involved finding clear skies somewhere in the NW and photographing the transit of Venus in front of the sun.  The jet stream had another plan and headed south causing a huge storm to swing in from San Francisco to British Columbia blocking out the sun all the way to Montana.  Realizing I was stuck in the clouds I decided to just do Evergreen’s Solstice 5-mile run at Grand Ridge instead since I had to run anyway.

It rained pretty much all morning with showers in the afternoon and then it dumped hard while I was driving over to the trailhead, going to be a wet one.   I had my Trail Gloves and BareGrips in the car figuring I’d decide which to wear when I got there.  I had my Lunas on as I jogged over to registration and I got a bit of encouragement to just wear them.  Figuring that my feet would be wet no matter what, I decided to be a bit badass and run the steep and wet Ridge in the Luna Leadvilles, it would be a good test of the limits of these things.

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Lord Hill was my fourth trail run last season and became my fourth trail run this season too though this year it was only the 10k for me and not the half, plus I was more prepared on the footwear front.   This was going to be my first run in months not in Lunas, I knew wearing the sandals could potentially be dangerous in a few spots on this trail so I laced up my Inov-8 BareGrip 200s which gave me all the traction I needed.   After finishing I realized that aside from one section I probably would have been fine with the Lunas.

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