Running to Think

The schedule of the last week has been quite tough. Especially if I think that the left knee is still recovering from an injury and rule #0 says "watch out! don't push too hard".
Some running sessions of 15 km for three consecutive days, some drills and intervals did a great job to exhaust my legs before the long distance session.
As expected my legs today were not exactly responsive. But that was the training indeed: running on numb legs.
The course was not extremely difficult, but a bit technical in the beginning with about 400 mt of elevation gain mainly distributed in the first part. The second part was indeed quite boring due to the road, straight and clear. With cars...
I am still not an expert of Finnish roads and I will probably never be. Definitely not in one more week, the duration of my staying.

One important fact that I should consider in my next training sessions regards the fact that I lose too many salts, finding quite disgusting white spots on the hydration pack and shirt that becomes sand when dry. Today I drunk the whole 2 liters provided by the pack, ate 1 gel and 2 bars on the total distance of 40 km.
The real story goes like this.
At km 39.5 I sucked the straw harder than usual and nothing was coming up.
"Damn it broke!" I thought.
Nothing more wrong than that, Frankie.
I just had drunk it all. No water. Nada. Niente.
This fact is curious and I will need to fix it with Caroline, because the pace and the weather gave me no reason to drink like a camel.

Anyway, as the first long distance session after a period of active recovery, I can consider myself satisfied. Tomorrow, I will check how legs respond to some short drills on the track&field.
Greets from Finland.

Run happy!

Only one month ago, Garmin decided to declare ANT Agent obsolete and forced me (and many other runners) to switch to their new SuperDuper Garmin Express.
The very first issue came when I was uploading my activity on Strava: not possible anymore. A small search on Google told me that indeed there was no viable way for Strava to communicate to Garmin devices. One workaround was to export the activity from Garmin Connect and import it manually in Strava. Time consuming and really annoying.
The worst occurred when the first activity got lost before upload. That was not happening since about two years.
Yesterday the most dramatic one: three activities I completed in Finland, on hilly tracks and one personal record on the distance of 15 km around the lake Jyvasjarvi in 59' got lost too.
I was furious and disappointed at the same time.
Garmin Express is not mature enough to go out as production software. You should know this, Garmin engineers!!
What annoys me the most is that we, poor users, can only suffer Garmin's mistakes. Therefore I suggest that Garmin engineers (or the project managers responsible for such a failure) should  pay the price of their own mistakes by running the miles that have been destroyed. At the same pace.

Not possible?
Fine. Pay us back, Mr Garmin!

Here is my review of these wonderful shoes I bought during my holiday in Southern Italy. I found a great deal, last number, last color, last everything and got a super discount, which was the perfect reason to buy running shoes for half the price.

Adidas Supernova Glide Boost presented themselves as really soft shoes since the very moment in which I took them in my hands. Quite a lot of marketing around the Boost technology was indeed attractive and worth trying. Yes, I had to wear and run like an idiot around the shop to prove that the cushioning was indeed comfortable.
At the beginning it seemed to be very soft. Probably too much. But I gave these shoes the amount of kilometers they needed to express themselves and decided to get an opinion only after 100 km.
The springy feeling of the Boost technology is not really nice for a runner like me who is used to run in the trail and wants to stay in contact with the ground. But things are different on the road. As a New Balance 890 v3 heavy user I must say that Adidas did a good job with the Boost. The springy feeling, too accentuated just outside the shop, literally disappeared after 100 km leaving only the good part of it.

As a result they provide a soft cushioning that is discrete on the heel and present on the forefoot. I am mainly a forefoot runner and some cushioning helps a lot there. The shoe in general is not stiff at all. It wears your foot like a sock and gives you the freedom that you need if you are a neutral runner. There are no stability features. Therefore watch out if you have been diagnosed with pronations.

One more thing: forget the trail. These shoes are made for the road and should stay on the road. Rocky tracks and dusty roads are not the perfect terrain for them. The tread is made by Continental, which also designs road tyres for cars. That should say a lot.

Happy Boosted running!