For the first eight years of my running career, I had one trainer (and possibly 1-2 pairs of spikes, depending on what year we're talking about). This meant that I wore whatever road shoes or cross-country spikes I had at the time (which was generally the Nike Pegasus or Nike Zoom Kennedy XC, depending on whether we're talking about trainers or spikes) on trail runs and trail races. As far as I was concerned, trail shoes were just the heavier, stiffer, and more bulked-up version of road shoes. I'm not really an ounce counter, especially when it comes to trainers, but stiffer is really not my thing. Then, in 2007, I walked into a store and saw the New Balance 790, a light, flexible, and low-slung trail racer. I had to have it. The 790 served me well...they got me through 38 miles of the Leadville Trail 100 (as a pacer...and yes, those bad boys stood up well to Hope Pass), 45 miles as part of a relay team for 24 Hours of Boulder (to be fair, my body didn't handle that one as well as I might have liked), numerous shorter trail races, two years of working as a counselor at a high school XC camp, and more trail tempo runs than I can count. Unfortunately, no shoe lasts forever, and by the time I finally decided it was time to replace them, New Balance had discontinued the 790. What's a roadie who occasionally pretends to run trails to do? Enter the New Balance WT10 (women's MT10, also called the Minimus Trail or Minimus 10 Trail).
