I’ve decided that trail running shoes are sort of like fly rods, in that you probably need a collection of them. If I only ran at a few trails all the time I’d get by with one pair of shoes, just like if all I did was fish a few small trout streams I could get by with a 7′ 4-weight fly rod and be pretty happy. Well, I fish for everything from 6″ trout in small mountain creeks to 100+ lbs. sailfish in bluewater so I have fly rods ranging from a 6′ 3-weight bamboo up to a 8′ 14-weight for offshore and don’t get me started on my switch & spey rod collection. Similarly I run on everything from the easy Watershed trails in the summer to the often slippery and muddy trails at Soaring Eagle to the rugged trails in the mountains so I now have amassed a collection of trail running shoes that I use for different situations.
Starting at the top and going clockwise the most minimal ‘shoe’ is my Luna Leadville sandals. These things are great for runs up to 10-miles in the summer on relatively mild trails. I used them extensively in Mazama and Central Oregon and also did all my running in the Bahamas in them. They work great at the Redmond Watershed in the summer too. These are also my daily footwear for much of the warm weather months. While I see people running tough 25-50k trail runs in them but that isn’t for me, just a bit too minimal for those conditions.
Next up – Merrell Trail Gloves. These are my primary training shoe for much of the year and I have done events up to a half marathon in them when the trails aren’t too rugged and have done training runs up to 20 miles in them. These were the shoes I started trail running in and still probably log the most miles overall in. My only beefs with them, they are slippery in mud and very wet conditions and when you hit a rock on rugged terrain it hurts, sometimes a lot. I like the Merrells so much that I actually have a pair of the True Gloves for everyday use and the GoreTex Embark Glove is now my hiking ‘boot’ of choice and my daily shoe in the rainy months.
Give the grip limitations of the Trail Glove I found a barefoot mud shoe – the Inov-8 Bare-Grip 200. These things simply rock and at the moment if I was limited to one trail shoe this would be the one. They grip like crazy in slippery mud and wet roots and rocks. They have no real sole so they have as much ground feel as the Merrells. I use these training in the winter and have done events up to 25k in them when conditions are nasty.
I still found that going longer than 18-20 miles in the true barefoot shoes was tough on the feet. This led me to look for a minimalist trail running flat that would give me a bit more support but still have a minimal heel drop and a lot of ground feel. The first one I went to was the Inov-8 F-Lite 195. Last year this became my shoe of choice for runs 25k and over and I used them for my 20-mile run, my marathon and my 50k. Only complaints, they don’t last long and they get a bit slippery too in nasty conditions since they have a pretty flat bottom without an aggressive tread.
Finally, my latest shoe rounds out the collection – the Inov-8 Roclite 285. This has the same low heel drop as the 195 but has a very aggressive tread like the Bare-Grip to handle mud and slippery rocks and roots. While a very minimalist shoe is many regards it feels very cushy to me given what I usually wear and I got this shoe primarily for long runs (25k and up) in really rugged or slippery terrain.
I’m hoping that these five shoes will be enough to get me through most of the conditions I’m going to encounter on trails, I don’t want my running shoe collection to start catching up to my fly rod collection in size (you really don’t want to know).