Almost Perfect

There's a fine line between genuine exhaustion and sheer laziness. Today I thought it was the former - I even took an extra rest day yesterday - and true enough, it really was fatigue. Fortunately good weather combined with encouragement from my wife got me off the couch and I ran three miles plus at a 7:34 pace. I felt a marked improvement on this run: my pace was more uniform and I powered past hills along my route without slowing down. Not to take away from my training efforts, but I think it might have been the shoes.

Overall, I'm quite impressed with the Brooks Pure Flow 4. It's a relatively light shoe at about 8.5 ounces, with a snug, comfortable fit, decent stability and adequate cushioning, particularly if your feet slightly overpronate like mine. Plus the sizing is relatively faithful to my normal footwear - for example, they're just a half size bigger than my dress shoes. When running on pavement, I can feel the soles, which are covered with oval shaped rubber nodes, firmly "grip" the road, especially around turns. One result is little to no slippage between the sneaker and the road, and an almost spring-like effect with each stride.

A few minor quibbles about the Brooks are the cushioning and the laces. For my purposes, the cushioning for now is fine, but if I increase my mileage from my meager 10 miles a week to say 20, then my legs and my knees might need soles with a little bit more heft. And the laces for some reason feel like they're going to become undone, even after triple tying them. Racing wise, these aren't too heavy, for my level anyway. But if I was a more serious runner, or running sub-18:00 5k times, then a lighter shoe would be in order. All in all I wouldn't call these the perfect running shoes, but they do come pretty darn close.