Molly Pritz 1:10:45 at San Fran Half!

Seeing as track hasn't yet started in London (well, except for the athletes, because for them it started a long time ago), allow me to steer your attention towards the San Francisco Half-Marathon, where Molly Pritz, running for ASICS, went 1:10:45 to shatter the old course record and set herself a new PR...in the middle of marathon training. Which makes it all the more impressive because running marathon pace for 13 miles is a pretty tough thing to do during marathon training. You heard it here first...that girl is going to be the next big thing. Better update later when I'm not at XC camp in the woods with spotty Internet.

Gear Review: Brooks Green Silence

I put off buying the Brooks Green Silence for a long time. The shoe's main selling point is that it's environmentally friendly. Really? I'm all saving the environment and slowing global warming, but I want shoes that are known for their performance, not for saving the planet (although both would be pretty sweet). However, I had some friends who seemed to like them, and then I heard someone compare them to the PureConnect, only with decent durability. Hm, well that was enough to make me order them. Then I got word that they were being discontinued, along with the Launch, and I put off writing the review for a long time. I mean, who wants to read a review about a shoe that's being discontinued at the end of this year? In fact, I almost didn't write it (hence the pictures of the beat-up shoes below). But then I thought about it and realized that it's a pretty cool shoe, and as far as I'm concerned, people deserve a chance to hear about it and try it before it disappears. So on to the review!

Another Contest! (not mine this time though)

Just giving you guys a heads up that Molly Pritz is running a contest on her blog for anyone who can guess her finishing time at the San Francisco Half. If you need something to work with, her stats are here, though keep in mind she's not tapered for this one. Good luck!

Click here for details and to enter!

Mezamashii Contest Winners!

I was absolutely blown away by the response to the Mizuno Mezamashii giveaway. All in all, there were 256 entries (minus a few that I'll discuss in the next paragraph) for two spots on the Mezamashii Project. I enjoyed reading about all of your Brilliant Runs, as well as hearing what kind of shoes you guys would want, so thanks to everyone for participating! And of course, thanks to Mizuno for sponsoring the Mezamashii Project!

In case you're all wondering how this worked, I used RANDOM.ORG to generate a random number, then figured out which comment corresponded to that number. Seems fair, and seems to be how all the other blogs do it, so if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me. There were a few deleted comments, and at least one joke comment (thanks a lot, Nicole!), so I had to see if the deleted comments figured into the comment count (they did). Thus, I figured if I landed on one of them I'd just pick another random number. Luckily, this wasn't an issue and I was able to just use the first two numbers I picked.

The Mezamashii Project and Free Shoes Giveaway! CONTEST CLOSED

As you may have heard by now, Mizuno is starting up The Mezamashii Project. This is Mizuno's way of reaching out to runners, getting some shoes on people's feet with the confidence that they'll like 'em enough to be repeat customers.

Gear Review: New Balance MT10 (WT10) Minimus Trail

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).

Gear Review: Runner's Log by FikesFarm, LLC

One of the things I had drilled into my head in college was that it's crucial to keep a running log. My coach would expect us to mail our logs to him in the summer and to bring our logs into our meetings with him, so he could see how we were handling the training, as well as what kind of supplemental training we were doing on our own. I've tried various logs over the years. My first log was the planner that I had originally intended to use for school assignments (obviously that got used exactly how I had originally planned). That worked until I lost that log. Next, while I still had hopes of finding my planner, I kept everything on the whiteboard outside my room, figuring I'd copy it all over when I found it. Needless to say, I didn't find it, and my roommate eventually erased the "random numbers and jibberish" because people weren't able to leave her messages. Oops. After that, I tried keeping everything in a Word document on my computer (which in retrospect, should have been either a spreadsheet or database, but apparently I'm not that organized). Apparently I didn't feel this was worthy of being backed up, and I lost it when I got hacked (long story, don't ask). I then moved on to various steno books until I was introduced to Athleticore (think DailyMile or RunningAHEAD without the flash). Athleticore is great, but let's face it, it's not 2009 anymore, and a lot of people don't want to deal with loading times and a browser and a log that doesn't have the ability to let you map out a route. People want apps. With the introduction of Runner's Log by FikesFarm, LLC, if you have an iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad, well, now there's an app for that.