About Me

I often find myself the go-to person that friends ask for shoe, training, and race advice. Those conversations usually end the same way. With me getting way too excited talking about the topic, and the friend realizing they stepped into a wall of text that will take them about 15 minutes to read fully. So here I am writing down my thoughts in reviews, mainly to save my friends from my over-sharing excitement about shoe tech and training strategies. A nerdy outlet, if you would, and if they ever really want my personal opinion, it will live here. (where they can have Claude give a TLDR)

A bit of background about myself as a person. I live in Southern California by the Los Padres National Forest, where most of my running takes place. When I’m not running or writing about running, I work as an engineer coding automation solutions for manufacturing plants (Hence the nerd in me). I love running in the mountains at dusk, the surreal feeling of being out under the new stars as the sunsets drives me wild. I live in Southern California, and my favorite place to run near me is the Los Padres National Forest. These mountains have such a wide variety of terrain and elevation that I call home. I share my running time on the local beach path, track for workouts, and other local mountain ranges for a bit of trail style variety (when I'm tired of running vert).

What I Run

While I write this, my season is more focused on “shorter” trail racing. But I am a long-distance mountain athlete at heart. Nevertheless, I do love to go fast. I am mostly racing trails around the 2-hour mark right now with lots of vert. But the calendar this year includes things as short as 10kms and up to 100kms. Most of my time running is focused on becoming more efficient in the mountains. From off-trail routes, 100mile trail runs, and smooth dirt half marathons, I love it all. I love the difference a shoe can make for each distance. The versatility of these races amounts to a lot of different training blocks, anything from 4-hour back-to-back runs to 200m sprints on the track, and I got a shoe for all of it.

For the mountains, finding fast, well-fitting shoes that can go all day is what matters most to me. I find high stack mid-soles or lack of stability is not usually an issue for me, even in shoes known for being unstable. If that’s not what you find important (what’s wrong with you), my reviews may not align with your goals.

Foot Geometry

I often find it annoying that reviewers don’t specify their foot shape during reviews. Just casual hints on geometries. I find myself trying to piece together an image of their gnarled feet and just can never quite picture what that means for me. I want the nitty-gritty, so here’s mine. I have a narrow ankle that widens to a larger than normal midfoot with slight bunions (thanks climbing shoes). I have shorter, boxy toes that like to be able to wiggle around in their toe box. A shallow arch and slightly high-volume feet. I’m fairly blister-prone, think of the skin on your grandpa’s hands, and that’s what my feet look like, wrinkled. Which causes friction blisters fairly easily. That being said, I can get away with most shoes for up to 5-6 hours on foot. But past that time frame, especially on technical terrain, I often wish I knew how a shoe fits better before taking it to that limit. Obviously, it is unlikely to wear a shoe for that long on a training run (minus the insane few), so I hope these details give more depth on why I like or dislike the fit of a shoe.

Cya Around

If any of this speaks to you, I hope my rants prove useful to you and can give some insight into your next shoe purchase, training plan, or race goal. Or at least this outlet will stop me from bothering my friends so much with my excitement over the new best shoe.