Lost marathon runner

Run Fat Boy Run

Self-supported 50+K

The weather was once again fantastic today. The nice thing about living so far up north is that it rarely gets too warm for running here, not even on summer days like this when the sun is shining over 18 hours a day. The temperature felt just right for me: 14-17 degrees C (around 60F), with a nice cool breeze going on all day long.

I ran 52.3K (32.5 miles) in 6:12. The heel of my left foot is still a little sore, so I tried to land more on the forefoot than the heel. That seemed to help.

So this was my self-supported ultramarathon of week 22. As you may know it's my goal to run one ultramarathon (beyond 42.2K) each week, at least until the end of this year. So far so good.   

Finland's Toivanen runs 2:59 at IM Lanzarote

Finnish triathlete Teemu Toivanen ran the fastest marathon of the day (2:59) at Ironman Lanzarote, but that wasn't enough to catch Belgian Bert Jammaer, who had a comfortable 15 minute lead after the grueling 180K bike. 

Jammaer ran a 3:06 marathon and crossed the finish line in 8:59, which is a respectable time for this tough course. 

Toivanen, who was 11th after bike, came second in 9:08, beating Estonian bike monster Ain-Alar Juhanson by 22 seconds.

Official race coverage can be found at Ironman.com.

Salomon XT Wings - seven weeks later

Seven weeks ago I posted a review of my new Salomon XT Wings trail running shoes. Let's take another look at them now, after I've run 928K (577 miles) with them.

The red rubber in the back heel part of the shoe is pretty much done. If this keeps up there will soon be nothing left. The front part of the shoe is still ok though.   

These special laces do not seem to be very durable, do they? They just snapped under pressure, I didn't hit them with a sharp rock or anything like that. That's not a nice thing to happen, especially when you are out there running. By the way they promised to get me a new set of laces for free next week.

After doing some shopping around, I bought a new pair of wings, because they are widely available for a reasonable price. I only changed colors from red to grey. I thought that reflects my transition of feelings about these shoes quite well.