Well there, I finally ran in a pair of Puma Mobiums that fit they way they are supposed to.
Thank you again Katie K. and family for the early Christmas gift.
Yes, they are bright.
They are definitely “Harold” shoes, it just took a mile or so to figure out how best to run in them.
The Swiftstrikes have a very different feel to them when I first started running in them, it was…well clunky. For the first 100 yards, the heel-to-toe transition was horrible, they slapped the ground, were loud and if I had been at a running store, doing a fitting I would have turned around and just said no.
I thought during that time what kind of mistake did I do?
However, I was pretty much committed to running with Bennie and he doesn’t take kindly to cutting his run short — unless he wants to. Yeah, he becomes an unbearable pain in the arse to be around.
So I kept going.
Then I got to thinking about if I could change my stride slightly to make them quieter. I played around until I got on the dirt road and then I gave up trying to force a change to my running form. It felt like I was slapping the ground like a mad man. It just didn’t feel right going down the hill.
Clunky is the word I would use.
The strange thing was even though it felt like I was fighting the shoes all the way, when I got to the first mile split, I was under 9:00 minutes. Then a truck went by and Bennie went into hyperdrive…we just ran, I forgot about how I was running and just kept up.
Something happened once we did that little interval, because once we got down on Tiffany, the Mobiums had stopped slapping the tar and I was running quieter. They will never be a silent shoe, but even when I slowed down, I had found my stride that worked with these shoes.
I could definitely tell the difference.
The next mile was an 8:08 without really pushing that hard, well…except when Bennie decided to go in chase mode when a car went by. Even going up Steven’s Hill felt pretty good.
By the time we got back on the tar in front of the house and for the rest of the run, the Swiftstrike’s felt really good. I could immediately tell when I wasn’t running efficiently in them, because I would start to slap the road. Which means that while I am running in them, I have a cue to run better in these shoes.
When I got done, I felt good, the Swiftstrikes felt comfortable and could have gone a lot further, err I even thought about dropping Bennie off and heading back out, but I was a good boy and shut it down.
No blisters, hot spots or any other problems with the shoes, after that initial WTF did I get these shoes for, things sorted themselves out. Sometimes that first impression of a shoe, isn’t what the shoe actually will feel like in the long run (pun intended). They are a fairly firm shoe, but felt good underfoot, especially once I got rid of the slapping the tar every step thing.
If I had gone with my initial run impressions and turned around, I wouldn’t have found out how well I was running in them later in the run. I am not saying that the Puma’s are going to be a great running shoe for me, one run doesn’t mean a whole lot. However, once I finally found my stride that works with the Swiftstrikes they were a surprisingly comfortable shoe to run in.
Hey, I did run in a pair of Mobium’s and you know something, I am even more intrigued about how they will work, enough that I might even take them on a little jaunt into Augusta in them tomorrow to see how they do – it will definitely answer more than a few questions. 🙂
Especially, if I don’t have Bennie tugging, pulling or suddenly stopping to do some business on the run. I love him dearly, but he is still hard to run with even after all these years – sometimes.
Harold Being Harold 
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