All right I hope the last piece of the puzzle for a while at least. The Skechers GoRun Ride 8s. I finally went ahead and did it.

Looking back I loved the GRR7s, but was worried that the fit in the ankle wells would be the same, which would make them blister magnets, which is definitely not be what I wanted. However, after trying out several pair of daily trainers over the past few months, I thought that I needed to try GRR8s.

After the first run today, I am glad that I did, plus they are “Harold” bright colors.

One run does not mean a whole lot in my book, but there were no issues after a 2.0 mile walk with Bennie and then a 3.0 mile run from the ankle wells or anywhere else. Which leaves me ever hopeful that the GRR8s might be the shoe that I had hoped and wished that the GRR7s would be.

The upper is a huge upgrade over the GRR7s and the size 8.0 fit quite nicely. Put a carbon plate in there, go with a mesh upper, and lose an ounce or more of weight and you would have a pretty remarkable marathon racer/fast trainer.

When I ran in them they had a squishy-firmness that once I got used to it, I really enjoyed and on the last lap, I might have picked it up a little just to see how they would be running a little more normally, they did fine.

A first good impression, not to see where they will be in a few weeks when I get back to training and am not recovering from the pain in the periformis area and my month long relaxation month.

• Course: Philbrick Laps, Sidney, ME
• Distance: 3.01
• Time: 27:00
• Pace: 8:58
• Cadence: 166

The right leg is still in the 60% range, runnable but not ready for prime time. It is a good thing that I am doing introduction to ChiRunning right now and how it is helping me not be too stoopid.

Today’s run was about working on my posture and while I think I held it better than I have for a while, I know that I still have some work to do. Also I notice that I am attempting to do focus on too many things at once, because I have just enough experience and knowledge about ChiRunning to be dangerous and would like to think that I am more advanced than I am.

I know that I need to keep working on the basics of my running form and that does start with posture – no matter who’s method you are talking about. If you have poor posture, you have piss poor running form – just the way it works. I had poor posture and still have work to do.

Although tomorrow I am going to start working on the lean portion of my running, while continuing to work on the posture. Which is something that I will probably work on for the rest of my life, this is not something that you can do for a week, then think it is all great and ignore it going forward – it is something that needs to be tweaked, looked at and practiced as a lifetime thing.

I really did not want to do the Running Yoga with Adrienne today. However, I did anyway and really think that I need to do just keep doing this as often as I can going forward. The body is more sore from the Yoga than the running at times I think, but at the same time I can feel changes happening in the body that need to continue. It is more a head games kind of thing than anything that wants me to not do it. So that means that I need to continue, which is not what I have done in the past.

Overall, I was more impressed with the first run in the Skechers GoRun Ride 8s than I want to admit and hope they are part of the solution that I am looking for moving forward. Hopefully, the number of new shoes will slow down considerably after introducing three pair this week.

Yeah, I am a running shoe geek.