Baregrips- first race

After recce-ing the Lantern Pike, I thought that it was easily grassy enough to get the baregrips out for a bit of angry racing.
A bonus of this one is also thats its only 1.4miles, an up and down beast on which its barely possible to get blisters, unless you have REALLY shocking shoes.

Main impression was on the way up, as expected, there was no support for my feet- under the soles that is. I could feel the muscles and lumbricals and tendons and ligaments working in my feel to stabilise it as I ran on a camber up the hill. Normally this stabilisation is taken care of quite happily with a solid base on the shoe. (this is also the case with the slightly "heavier" arrow soles on other inov8s.

The grip was brilliant, and the only reason for me falling over was putting my foot in a rabbit hole.

I'm still not going to wear these for longer races yet, and certainly not on anything that has extensive rocky paths- I suspect that will just lead to bruised feet.
Its also worth pointing out that I warmed my feet up thoroughly on a squidgy balancey ball thing before the run, to wake up my brain into recognising that my feet were there, and weren't just going to be shoved into a solid shoe and ran on. I think that proprioceptively "waking up" your feet is more important in this kind of shoe, and suspect that had I not done that, my feet would not be thanking me for the strain placed on them going up and down a hill with little or no support.

So, if you are thinking about getting Baregrips, or another type of barefoot running shoe, warm yer feet up before you head out there... we already know, but its worth saying again, if you arent used to them, they are quite likely to do you a mischief.

Inov8 mudroc 285

Used the roclite 265 incarnation for a couple of years, and have quite literally destroyed them.
Known as the "greens"- for obvious reasons, they didnt stay green for long, more a muddy brownish green, but thats really not an issue.

The mudroc sole unit has excellent grip. In fact, ridiculous amounts of grip. Ive twisted my ankle because of going around a corner, expecting my foot to slip, it didnt, and I just went straight over on my ankle... Big styley ouch.
However, they have gripped through mud, bog, slime, gravel, chalk, clay, you name it, its been through it, and come out the other side. Ive never had such a grippy shoe going down hill, and never been so surefooted on every type of surface.
That grippiness comes with a price, and the rubber is quite soft, rubbing the cleats away in a few months. (especially when used in conjunction with V12 pedals... to be fair, they are the things that have totally ripped the bottoms to shreds)


Having said that, once on flat pedals, these things dont come off. Its almost like wearing spds, but not.

The bad thing about these shoes is the heel fit. The first few times I ran in these, they ripped my heels to pieces. I thought that they would get a little softer, but no.
Every time I went out, I had to put large amounts of compeed on, which eradicated the problem. Without compeed, just, No.

I found out about steaming the heel cups from the inov8 website, and thought that this might be the answer. It did indeed help, but I still needed compeed every time. A small price to pay for awesome shoes and great grip. If there is another shoe out there that does the same thing without killing my feet, that will be a good shoe.


one other thing- after admittidly quite a lot of) usage, there has been a minor rip out on the medial side of the shoe by the joint of the big toe. Not a massive one, but worth having a picure of.






And finally, I did have a pair of these where the sole unit was coming away from the rest of the shoe after about 4 decent runs.
I sent them back to inov8 who acknowledged that it was a manufacturing fault, and sent me a new pair within a week. Excellent service. (but I cant find the picture of that shoe)