Trail shoe, meet treadmill

This morning, before my run, I realized that the foot pod for my Garmin 50 was still attached to one of my new NB 460 trail shoes. The effort to remove and then attach it to my regular shoes is minimal but just time consuming enough for me to think twice about it. As I've mentioned before, every minute counts in my early morning routine.

In the interest of time I decided to run with the 460s on the treadmill. I figured they performed well on the street so it wouldn't matter too much if they weren't made for running on a treadmill surface. Starting up was a little tough which I attributed to both the tread of the shoes and to some residual stiffness I have in my right leg. I'm planning to visit my orthopedist after my May race to get to the root of that problem which, at the moment, involves some slight pain and restricted mobility when starting a walk or run.

I got up to speed fairly quickly and the 460s, though not especially heavy, felt like I was running with comfortable work boots. As usual, my treadmill display shut down after about five minutes (as a technologist I am horrified by the failings of most running technologies I've used. But to be fair the treadmill is over a decade old) so I pushed the speed control blindly until the Garmin registered 7 MPH.

I ended up running 1.81 miles at an 8:50 pace. Although the use of these shoes on the treadmill was not ideal they're proving themselves to be a great buy. Tomorrow I'll aim for the same distance with the Nike's to compare experiences. I'm betting that under the same conditions, with the right shoes, I should be able to improve on that pace.