More mud, more aches and shoe thoughts

Woke up this morning to rain but thankfully it brightened and legs felt ok after yesterday. A quick run intended but led to 7 miles along the cliffs to Witches Point near Southerndown beach. I seem to do this more and more. I feel bad for the first few miles and think ah well I’ll just come home a short route and end up feeling fine after three or four and then go mad.  It was fine today until the slog uphill through the worst mud yet from Cwm Mawr (Wich beach ladders) This time I really felt it in the legs, everything was aching and I was worried on the road part of the journey home that I was going to pull a muscle in my arse or hamstring.

Still, having done over 13 miles in the last two days I feel better about going back to work tomorrow. It’s back to trying to squeeze in runs after work until it gets lighter, well at least we’re heading towards spring!

I’ve been trying to work out which of the trail shoes are better in the mud.  I have 3 pairs (One of which I havent been out in yet).  The Adidas Kanadia 6 I bought from Run and Become after they checked out my gait etc and they felt best overall. They aren’t waterproof to any degree at all, they’re designed to let water in and then straight back out so it doesn’t stay in the shoe.  Works fantastically on the beach but when wading through mud they just stay wet anyway.

Today I ran in my Asics Gel Trail tamboura 4 (picked up from ebay but thats another post for another day) which are better at keeping water and mud out – up to a degree but it cant get out as well. Today it wouldn’t have mattered which I wore as the mud and water flowed over the top anyway.

After yesterday when I was slipping and sliding on wet paths which have seen far too much rain and use this xmas, I was hoping the Asics would provide me with more traction but they too left me sliding around. To be fair it would take something special to provide grip with the trails the way they are at the moment. I’m spending a lot of time running alonside them as much as possible to keep going without slipping.

I’ll probably get through to this spring but try and pick up a pair of better lugged shoes like the Inov-8 X Talon 200 which might deal with mud better.

Sun finally peeking through at Wick beach

Looking back at the path over the cliffs at Dunraven

View from Dunraven over the three bays I mostly run. The furthest end of this is Cwm nash leading to Monknash and home. These bays cover around 2 miles