Raid the Rib and my Hierros (400 KM later)

Well good morning everyone. Welcome to another weekend! My weekend is STACKED with fun including a trail run with one friend, a hike with another, a dinner party with girlfriends, a long ride with Habitat for Humanity and a foray into my first golf game of the season with the Running Boyz, a local group I run with. I am so excited to get out and enjoy the weather.

I am starting to ramp up training as some of my larger races and expeditions are being confirmed. I actually confirmed three of my biggest ones this week and I can’t wait to share some of them with you but for now, I wanted to share a race that I did a couple of weeks ago with Team Ripkin. I did Raid the Rib with my two favourite team mates ever and we had a blast on the course as always.

It’s always easier to share events through a video, so check out the short film my team mate Brad did for the event. The stream and swamp crossings as well as crawling under fences when it was so cold proved to be a little brutal but I had a blast:

Brad just moved much closer to me so I am looking forward to doing more adventure race-specific training with him and another local adventure racer this summer. A couple of my race announcements have to do with the team and include a national race and a USARA Qualifier so I need to be on the top of my skill game. Brad can casually run a sub 17 minute 5 KM in a training run in his off season and rowed varsity so I am most certainly the weak link on the team. It keeps me both humble and motivated to continually improve.

It is time to do a review on my New Balance Hierros which I wore for the past adventure race, a number of trail races last year and training runs. I have said this often, but I don’t review a pair of shoes until I have properly tested them with 200-500 KM and can truly show the measure of the shoe.

I always feel that when I do an adventure race with trail shoes that I am putting them to the ultimate test because they go through mud, water, hill climbs, mountains, rocks and pretty much every type of element imaginable. They even have burn holes in them from a campfire at the POCAR adventure race I did in January.

Basic shoe information:

Date acquired: August 2015
KM run on the shoe: 154.2 tracked (but you are not able to measure distance on adventure races so I am imagining it is closer to the 400 KM mark)
Weight of the shoe: 248 grams (8.7 oz)
Retails for: $139.99
My colourway: Blue with Sea Glass and Hi-Lite
About the shoe: Named after the least populated and wildest of the Canary Islands, it is a high mile-age trail shoe with a Vibram outsole and odor resistant technology.

My thoughts:

This was a much better trail shoe for me than the Fresh Foam 980s. When I say I am HARD on my shoes, I am not lying. I ripped through the toe box of those shoes on my 120 mile Transrockies stage race last summer and I was equally hard on the Hierros but they didn’t budge.

They were lightweight and great for summer and winter trail races. They were comfortable, durable and kind of the “little engine that could” of trail shoes. They are a bit stiff but I can’t decide if that is dried dirt on them or the shoe itself. All I know is that they are the type of shoe I want to be wearing when I am in the middle of the woods, 100 miles away from any aid station because I know they will take me the distance. I highly recommend this shoe to any high mileage trail runner who is hard on their shoes. These will hold up.

I am currently wearing these and testing out the New Balance 910v2s.

Not to spoil my review for those, but I like them even more than the Hierros. They have Gore-Tex for winter running and are the most responsive, high-mileage trail shoe I have ever ran in.

Review coming in about 200 KM!

What trail shoe are you currently running in?