New Balance MR1400 Review

I know I'm usually a Brooks guy, but I know a guy who knows a guy who hooked me up with these shoes on the cheap, so I figured I'd give them a spin. I've got 637 miles on them so far over two months, and they're beginning to wear down, so I'm going to try and get a second pair- thats how good they are.

These shoes are like butter on your feet. I've done all my miles in them sockless, and the upper is amazing. In terms of weight, I have them in size 7.5 and they weigh 6.8 oz, so they're solid for a racing flat. I mean, I've used them as a daily trainer before- at one point I wore them for three weeks straight on all my runs including the long runs. I'd say 14 or 15 miles are the upper limit on them though- at least for me- after that your feet really start getting beat up. I realize I've got a lot of miles on them- most of you won't get that high. That's a combination of me being a little guy (5'9'', 120lbs), and me not having money for other shoes. Realistically, I should have replaced them at 6 hundo or so.

Some things to keep in mind if you buy these shoes:
1) They run about a half size small lengthwise. Remember your feet swell when you run
2) These hold blood really well. The entire forefoot of my left shoe is covered in dried blood. Sorry if you were eating lunch when you read this, but I broke my toe a while ago and never had it set back in properly, so the joint is raised up a little bit, and scrapes against the low toe box on these shoes- especially on longer runs.

Also, somebody found my blog today by searching "Galen Rupp haters." I love it. I guess he did just set the American 5k record.

Milestones.

So yesterday I went for a run. Big news, right? Well, let me tell you something you have different types of runs, and you go through all of them in a given training cycle, or even a month. I'm not talking speed, tempo, recovery, whatever runs. Over a given period, you're going to have runs that serve as landmarks, for better or worse, and serve as a measuring stick if you will. For examle, you might say "remember that long run after a tempo a few weeks back where my legs felt like bricks? Well now I can do it without being laid up in bed for the entire day." That kind of thing- the kind of thing that keep you coming back as a runner, kind of like a hole in one in golf after an otherwise terrible round.

Well, I had one of those runs. It was a 14 mile tempo after an off day. I didn't do anytrhing spectacular that day, in fact I thought I would just bomb it. I had a bottle of lienie's honey weiss and three hot dogs for lunch, and another honey weiss and some cajun tots from the Blue Door after work. And I got our waitress' number. That was a key right there. Point is, I wasn't really thinking about the run, which is both good and bad. Anyways, I get home from Blue Door, crush a nap, and wake up at 8, shoot a Gu, pop on my flats and am out the door by 8:30. I go through the first mile in 6:54. Okay, I was shooting for 7:01's, but whatever. The first mile is always the hardest, so I figure I'm in good shape. This is the exciting part- I didn't get stopped by a stoplight once. By mile 7, I hit the turnaround. I ran to St. Thomas minneapolis campus which I think helped a little because I could run that route with my eyes closed walking backwards.

I looped around the school, and picked it up around Gold Medal Park and the stone arch bridge, by far my favorite part of the run. It crossed my mind that since mile 4 I hadn't looked at my watch at all, and fought off the urge to because doing so would make me worry about my pace, and probably mean slowing down, which wasn't an option brecause once I slow down its hard to will myself to go fast again. After the bridge, I got the runner's high or whatever- its been a while since that's happened. And then I was like three blocks from my house. 6 miles down, and I don't remember a step of it, which is fine with me.

I pass my house, click my watch instinctively but don't look down. I don't look at my watch for about an hour after my run, but I was pretty pleased with what I saw: 14.09 miles in 1:33:48. Damn. That's not luck folks, thats three months of training paying dividends. If you need proof that there are no secrets in this sport, there it is. Doing it in training and a race are two verry different things. I'm racing this weekend, but I'm doing it with my roommates, so I probably won't bust my ass over going fast; I'm shooting for 1:45-1:50, having that kind of speed in your back pocket is kind of cool though.

Or we could blaze!

That's a quote from Once A Runner, if you didn't know. Most of my post titles are from OAR. I would have put the full paragraph up there, but it wouldn't fit, so here ya go:

It is simply that we can all be good boys and wear our letter sweaters around and get our little degrees and find some nice girl to settle, you know, down with...Or we can blaze! Become legends in our own time, strike fear in the heart of mediocre talent everywhere! We can scald dogs, put records out of reach! Make the stands gasp as we blow into an unearthly kick from three hundred yards out! We can become God's own messengers delivering the dreaded scrolls! We can race dark Satan himself till he wheezes fiery cinders down the back straightaway....They'll speak our names in hushed tones, 'those guys are animals' they'll say! We can lay it on the line, bust a gut, show them a clean pair of heels. We can sprint the turn on a spring breeze and feel the winter leave our feet! We can, by God, let our demons loose and just wail on!

Yeah, good stuff. I think I'm going to get that book out of the library today and never finish reading it. Kind of like that book on Haile Gebreselassie that I never finished reading? that one sucked though. Its not like I can't sit down and write all of OAR either, because I probably can, but there's something about reading that book every summer that gets me geared up for running.

So, actual running has gone great lately. Apart from the lax bros taking my beloved track from me. Like this lax bro, who is also my roommate (see photo). So my track work is scheduled on Tuesday, and because of my work schedule, I can't run until 8. Well, lax camp has both the field and track from 8-10 everyday, and since the only other day I could do a track workout in the morning is Friday (which would make me have two easy days in a row, but a speed workout and a marathon pace long run back to back, which would suck a lot. So I've been going to the High School track 5 miles or so from me (so 10 round trip). I'll just run there and run back. Its kinda brutal so sometimes I'll just wait until the brosciety meeting is over and run track at like 11, but that sucks too.

The Last 2 runs I've done in my new flats- my New Balance MR1400's. I think I figured out why I like them so much- they fit exactly like the Brooks Racer ST4's (which are my favorite shoes of all time), whereas the ST5's run a tad wider than the 4's... but I'll get to that in a later post. The two runs were an 11 mile tempo (2 mile warm up, 7 mile @ tempo pace, 2 mile cool down) on Thursday, and a 7 mile recovery on Friday. I'm probably going to wear my trainers for this weekend's runs, but I'd like to get up to the point where I can do an entire half marathon on flats and feel good about it.

Thats another thing, I signed up for another half marathon next month, so I'll be doing 2 within like 17 days of each other. Even better, they coincide with my long runs, so what up?

So last night was a rough one. I thought I was going to go to bed early like I usually do, get up for work at like 6, work from 8-noon, and then run home from work (which is 7 miles, I have 8 to do today). Not happening. I ended up pulling an all nighter for no reason, and it looks like I'm gonna grill when I get home, then nap, then take a night run since its supposed to get real hot real quick.

It looks like I might finally get my 21 papers sometime soon. I got an email from the New York Times (they email me headlines) saying that the Senate had reached a deal on the MN budget, which would potentially end 16 days of shutdown. However, when I clicked on the link to the article, it didn't exist, so I don't know what that means but I think we're still in lockdown mode over here. I tried to get my license renewed through the county service center last Thursday, but doors were locked and no one was home at 11 in the morning, so I don't know what's happening right now. It could be worse, at least we're not Detroit.

I'm thinking of getting into the steeplechase. Like really into it. Last year I did a couple club races and didn't do too badly (I only came in last twice) and only ate **** off the water jump once or twice. But I think it would be kind of cool to have that in my back pocket. Heck, Steve Slattery is still steeplechasing and he's like 50, so how hard can it be?

Also, one of my friends just turned 21, and she's engaged already. Either the kids aren't alright (thats an Offspring reference for all you hipsters) or I've got some work in front of me as far as dating goes