This morning it was just too muddy down back and I didn’t feel like doing a Pepin something again, so in my infinite wisdom, I decided to go run in Augusta. I haven’t run anyplace other than from the house since October 29th and I am getting tired of seeing the same scenery and this morning gave me a good excuse to do something different.

So I drove over to Piggery Road and parked at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) and figured out that I had forgotten to put on my Garmin 35. Yep, but wait – for instances like this I have an old Garmin 230 charging in the center console. I only get about 2 hours on a charge, but as long as I am not doing anything long, it is more than enough to get me through most workouts.

This is a course that I used to run once or twice a month pre-COVID and is the first time I have run it in a long time. I figured with the nastier day, it being a Saturday and the mostly rural nature of the course, I wouldn’t be meeting too many people on it.

I didn’t.

Also the course is an honest one with some deceptive hills and flats, so I didn’t imagine that I would be all that fast.

I wasn’t.

This run was just about getting out and doing the miles, so I started out comfortably and then stayed at this pace for the entire run. The first 6.0 miles of the run, my splits were all within 15 seconds. Which felt good the entire way. This was one of those runs where you get done with a smile on your face and know that it was a confidence builder that was needed.

I was running in the On Cloudflyers and I wanted to see how they did in a little longer run. This is the first run in a long time where the bottom of my feet were not killing me. I was beginning to think that I have 5 mile feet, but after today’s run, I have a pretty good idea that it is the shoes I have been wearing more than anything else.

So it seems I need a little firmer shoe versus the softer ones that I have been attempting to get to work for me. It was nice to forget about the shoes and just run, then think about how good the shoes felt after I got done. The grip on the wet tar was fine and I felt secure when cornering. The big surprise for me was that there were no rocks lodged in the outsole and I did a lot of running on the road shoulder which was a lot of dirt with lots of dirt and small rocks, along with the sand on the road itself from the last snow storm.

So far very impressed with how the On Cloudflyers are performing.

They are not the most cushy feeling shoe I have run in, but they run nicely and the best part is my feet do not hurt while running in them.