My Running Wings

When we got back from the weekend on Monday night I had a package sitting at our door.  It was a pair of Salomon XT Wings and a Nokia N82 phone.  I opened up the package and my first impression of the shoes was they were very red!  I've seen picture of shoes that others got and most of them had black leather accents.  Mine are just red.  While not a fan of the color, I must say that I don't think you can buy this color anywhere so that might be a good thing unless you really like red :)

I tried them on and they seemed cushy but maybe a little too roomy.  I needed to run in them.  I took out my phone and went to go charge it but grrr... European plug.  I had to pick up an adapater.  A few days later I have an adapter and I took my shoes out for a run last night so I have some first impressions.

When I got out of my car at El Moro yesterday a mountain biker said "those shoes look fast".  Tom, who was waiting to run with me said "I hope not" and I said "I think they just look red".  30 seconds after putting them on there were definitely drawing attention already.

The toe box is roomy.  The shoes have a wide stable and low base of support.  The heel seemed a bit loose but didn't bother me on a 5 mile run.  The laces are very easy to use as they have a lace lock system so no tieing.  You pull a little cord and they are good to go. 

As we started running I noticed right away how soft they feel.  And they are quiet.  Tom commented that it sounded like I was running on marshmellows.

About 4 miles into my run I tripped.  Was it a rock?  A root?  My new shoes?  Turns out that the lace lock system has this large loop and I didn't tuck it into my laces so it was flopping around.  I crossed my feet enough that one of them caught the loop and I went down.  Lesson learned.  And the dirt didn't taste so good but I was okay.

After the run I was quiet pleased.  My feet felt great.  I'll take them out for more miles, possibly a 21 miler on Sunday and see how they perform then.

The Nokia N82 is a GSM phone and I am a Verizon customer (whcih is non GSM) so I have not been fully able to try out the phone yet.  I did get it set up and play around with it a bit.  At first the menu and navigation was hard to figure out.  In fact I still can't figure out how to take a picture with the thing though I can get into camera mode.  I'm a pretty tech savvy girl so it's nto a good thing that I can't take a picture without reading the book.  I figured out most of the rest of the stuff pretty easy and I love the automatic screen rotation when you turn the phone.  The WiFi connection to our home WiFi was super easy and I was able to surf the net in no time with the phone.  Very easy.  I have not been able to try out the sports tracker since I need an active service for that but I plan on setting it up.  The phone has a beautiful display and looks pretty :)  I haven't figured out all the features yet becuase there are a lot of them.  This is certainly much more than just a phone and I look forward to exploring it more in the very near future.

I also hope to use the live feed option on Sports Tracker so that when I do my 33 mile race and my 50 mile Tahoe Race, I can be followed live on the internet sort of like they do at the Boston marathon and some other big races.  I think that's a pretty cool feature and we'll see how it works.

Happy Running & Dirty Feet,
Jessica