Michael: MT2s Take Three

If only I would fall
Like the slow golden leaves
I would be fearless.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

With El Nino possibly mucking up the trails in SoCal this year, I’m testing different gear combinations under various conditions to determine what I want to use during the Sycamore 100k trail race in San Diego, February 27.

I’ve taken the Topo MT2s out in dry conditions and have been very pleased. Yesterday I took them on the mucky and treacherous Quetzal. Usually, on that trail I run in the Asics Fuji Runnagades. They’re a deep lugged shoe designed for those conditions. The MT2s are more of an all purpose trail shoe.

But in the muck they held up fine. If I didn’t have the Asics I wouldn’t hesitate to use them in wet and muddy conditions. They’re as light as the Asics, dry quickly, and grip reasonably well. If I happened to step on a large pointy rock, I could feel the shoe give but it was never a painful experience. However, stumbling and kicking rocks did transmit a jolt of displeasure a few times. I’d say the toe guard was adequate under most conditions, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to kick obstacles off the trails with these shoes.

Where the MT2s outperform the Asics is after leaving the mud when I had to run a few miles on the road to catch the bus home. The Asics rely on the trail to provide cushioning, whereas the MT2s have a decent amount of midsole foam.

This is all to say that it’s a treat to live in an area where it’s useful to have a wide array of arrows in my trail shoe quiver. If I’m sticking mainly to the mud (pun intended), I’ll choose the Asics. If I’m going through a bit of mud but will be running on mostly dry trail or long stretches of road, I’d go with the MT2s. For very rocky roads, my Hokas. For all day fast packing outings, the Brooks’ Pure Grits. You get the picture.

I also took a different pack and candy bar on this outing.

The pack, the minimal one liter Hydrapak, is the oldest pack in my trail running arsenal and sadly, it showed its age a bit on this run. Not that it isn’t still very useful or has grown uncomfortable, but the elastic strap that’s meant to assist securing a gel flask in the shoulder harness has lost some of its grip and on one stumble it must have allowed my flask to launch out of the pocket because when I went to reach for some gel, it wasn’t there. That was irritating because I specifically use a flask so as not to liter the trail with easily mismanaged wrappers and tear tabs. Ironically, I ended this run with the foil of a Twix bar in my pocket and a 5 oz. flask left somewhere on the trail.

And speaking of Twix… very tasty but a little more chewy than a Baby Ruth and therefore I’d say not quite as trail worthy. It did work if I bit through a reasonably sized chunk and put it between my cheek and gum like an old fashioned tobacco chaw and just let the chocolate melt away. That method even made me feel kind of tough and Clint Eastwood spaghetti western cowboyish. Like if I met a trail running Lee Van Cleef coming the other way I’d stop, squint and think about letting him walk slowly by before spitting out a bit of the juice and loping off into the sunset.