I took yesterday off from running. Nope, it wasn’t planned, but after having more than 33,000 steps on Tuesday, the legs were feeling a bit heavy so I was procrastinating getting going for some reason after a 2.5-mile walk with Bennie. I had finally gotten changed up and was getting ready to head out the door when we got a phone call saying that the wife’s order was ready in Augusta. That took precedence over me running and I didn’t really put up much of a fight over it either.

Which meant that I was ready and raring to go this morning.

MMMMM not really.

Although it is a great day for running outside, sunshine, close to 50*F, and a nice breeze, I have a case of the blahs right now and while I get things done, it just takes longer to get started. It is a combination of being tired of all the political stuff, pandemic worries and just keeping the old noggin going in a positive manner – well it takes a lot more energy to keep it up.

However, I finally got out the door this morning and at the last minute, I decided to wear the Razor 3s, to see how they do on a slower training run and purposely keep it slower. Mostly because I want to get them over 50 miles, so I can do their review and get back to the normal running shoe rotation that I want, versus feeling like I have to wear a pair of shoes to reach a mileage point on them.

Also, I am getting weary of the same routes. Yes, I know that I am very lucky that I am pretty much unrestricted on my running routes and it is my choice to only run in Sidney, but at the same time a little variety is nice once in a while. So I decided to run down to the Blue Ridge/Sunrise loops off the Lyons Road. A nice change of scenery and that I would stop at 10K and walk it back in from that point.

• 1.0 – 9.09 / I purposely forced myself to not pick up the pace and when I got to the bottom of Stevens Hill I noticed that the Town had done a lot of work on the dirt road down-back and as a result, there were a lot of rocks all around. Pretty normal for when they do this work, but it makes running down there more of an adventure than usual and if you are not paying attention, it could be a bad ankle breaker.
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• 2.0 – 9:15 / The road work was even worse on Blake and let’s just say that the Razor 3s are not a great shoe for running on a freshly redone dirt road. Too damn much road feel.
• 3.0 – 9:23 / Going down the Middle Road was a bit of a wind tunnel but at least the surface was smooth and I didn’t have to focus so much where I was putting my feet. Although going up Blue Ridge was a pretty good hill.
• 4.0 – 8:52 / Coming down the other side let me go a bit faster, but I did notice on the steeper descents that the Razor 3s did not like a heavy heel strike and I really had to focus on more of a midfoot strike going down the steeper sections of the hill. This is not my normal downhill stride and made me focus too much on what I was doing versus just running.
• 5.0 – 9:42 / Coming back up Middle Road onto Blake was all uphill and I was getting tired. Once I got back on the dirt section that the Town worked on I purposely slowed down, I didn’t want to mess up the bottom of my feet on the rocks.
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• 6.0 – 9:54 / More of the same and I just sort of cruised easily to the end. I could have run in just a t-shirt and the long sleeve tech shirt was causing a little overheating issue towards the end.
• .21 – 9:40 / At this point I just wanted to be done.

Thee things I noted while running in the Razor 3s:

1. They did just fine at slower paces.

2. On a freshly redone dirt road, there is too much road feel – those rocks hurt the bottom of your feet.

3. Going down a steeper hill where you land harder on your heels the heels are gonna take a beating if you are not leaning to land closer to midfoot. This is the second time I have noticed this in these shoes and it was very prominent today.

I stopped right before Wade’s new driveway on Stevens Hill and walked it home. I could have battled up the rest of the way and taken it to the top of the hill, but I said a 10K was all I wanted to do and after I stopped I was glad that I did.

Overall, a really nice run where I learned some more about the Razor 3s, got to see some other people out running or walking (yes, we all observed social distancing), and saw some different scenery than I have been looking at lately.

I did get my Garmin FR230 a new watch band and am happy again. I just am not a big fan of the FR35 and how it fits my wrist and the heart rate monitor really is not all that accurate when I look at it after to see the heart rate.

When it tells me I am at a 180+ bpm and it is not capturing cadence (it had different cadence readings), and I am not feeling like crap during the run, then the watch is not too accurate.

A good run and good day, now to get over the mehs, so I can get back to having fun. 🙂