Work Work Work Recover… PLAY!!!!

2008_10_31 038 I’m finally cutting back on my training to prepare for my last race of the season, the San Francisco Pan-American Cup Triathlon At Treasure Island. (Why is it that races are getting longer and longer names? I mean, if this race were to receive a title sponsor, and if the tri-cal series had another title, this could conceivable become the K-Swiss ITU San Francisco Pan-America Cup Triathlon At Treasure Island Presented by Clif Bar.)

This week has been CRAZY. Two weeks ago I broke 50 miles of running in a week for the first time in my life, then I followed it up with two more weeks at even higher volume. For the first time in my life, I can actually say, I love running. Now I get to recover, before I go play in San Francisco in a week.

To help me play faster I have a new pair of kicks from K-Swiss. They’re the all new K-Swiss Kona racing flats, and I’m going to do a personal debut at the race on next week (Chris Lieto and Matt Lieto and Leanda Cave and a bunch of others already did their debut of the Konas at Kona three weeks ago.)

Above is a picture of how awesome they are (they also come with UK Flag, or silver and white.)

I really liked running in the L-Swiss Ultra-Naturals because they were super quiet. They’re a bit like running on clouds, but I’m excited to go back to a traditional racing flat. Here’s what I discovered with my size 10’s:

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This is a picture of my new K-Swiss Kona racing flat on the left, and my old Brooks Racer ST on the right. At 270g, the Kona is 5g lighter than the Racer ST, but unlike the Brooks, the Kona has a medial posting for added stability. The Racer ST also comes in a posted stability version, but the one shown is the neutral. I’m not sure what the weight difference is between regular laces and the quickie laces I put on the Brookes, but I’m assuming it’s negligible.

Right now I’m just wearing the Kona Racing Flats around the house to get used to them, but they fit really well, and I can’t feel any seems on the inside that worry me with regards to blistering.

With the Racer ST’s, I had ritual before races that I would go through. It involved putting liquid Band-Aid on every part of my foot that would hit a seem in my racing flats, waiting for that to dry, then wrapping my foot and each individual toe in paper tape. If I was lucky, half the paper tape would still be on when I made it to the run. I may have weird feet, I don’t really know. The Racer ST’s are great shoes, but with only my in-house wear testing of the K-Swiss Kona’s I’m fairly certain that these will be better from a blister standpoint.

I have a bunch more to blog about from the past week, so I’m going to start typing now and just set everything to publish one day apart for the next week. Stay tuned for some classic bencollins.org awesomeness.

Published by Ben

Ben Collins Professional Triathlete

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6 Comments

  1. i want those shoes. for worlds. they’re ME. i would be stylin’ so fine in the parade of nations………….
    will those be a general issue, out for the general tri public before next september?
    peggy

  2. Actually, I’ve been told these are custom, as are the UK version. Certainly there will be other awesome colors. On the other hand Peggy, k-swiss is practically your neighbor, you should just give them a visit and ask for some USA shoes!

  3. Those remind me of Rex’s stars and stripes pants in “Napoleon Dynamite.”

    “Would you want a roundhouse kick to the head while I’m wearing these bad-boys? FORGET ABOUT IT!”

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