It’s the shoes! Ya’ll know I’ve been thinking a lot about new running shoes lately. My “Born to Run” lovefest had be thinking about minimals like never before.  Plus — I needed flat shoes for Crossfit. So when Mizuno got in touch offering to send over a free pair of my choice, I knew what I wanted.

The Mizuno Wave Universe 4 Racing Shoes not only sound cool, but are light as a feather. When I picked them up for the first time, I was shocked at how airy they were. Was also a big fan of the lightening-esque design on the sides. The deets from Mizuno:

    An engineering marvel, the Wave Universe is part of the Global Elite collection and as minimal as a shoe gets.

    Cutting edge “printed” overlays provide just the right amount of support.

So far, I’ve run a total of about 15 miles in these things and have a mixed reaction. I love the nothingness feeling but running did feel a little weird. I felt much more connected with ground and with less spring.  At the same time, I felt fast and calm and smooth. I had a particularly “good running day” yesterday so perhaps that was a combination of how my body was feeling, my optimism for the shoes and their ability.

We’ll just have to see how they do by the time I’m crossing one of these babies:

I’m looking forward to going for a long run in these over the weekend and see how my body adapts. These may be toooo minimal for long runs for me. If that’s the case, they will become my official Crossfit shoes and I’ll try something with a bit more cushioning. Either way, I really like them and thank Mizuno for giving me the chance to try them.

Special thanks to Mizuno’s Chris Hasty for catching my tweets and recommending I try them without socks. Did so today and found it to be optimal!

Sadly, as I made my way to Crossfit this morning (having rolled out of bed and out the door basically), I tried to avoid a sprinkler on the sidewalk and somehow tripped over my feet and fell face first, banging my chin on the ground. Since earlier this week, I already banged a bar into my chin doing cleans, this was not ideal. Honestly, I’m not accustomed yet to these kind of shoes and I think it contributed to my fall a lot. See wound:

I feel like my clumsiness has been at an all-time high lately. I run into things a lot, drop things and am just a basic hot mess sometimes. I’m not sure what that is! Am I simply careless or am I truly missing a sense of balance? Last week, I seriously banged my shin on a box doing a kipping pull up — then proceeded to bang a bar into the same area when I hurt my back doing deadlifts:

This photo doesn’t do it justice at all. It’s actually a huge welt spread over half my shin. You can kind of see the greenish tint. It hurts!

Anyway, Crossfit work out today was good: 

— 500M row
— Back Squats (8, 8, 6)
WOD: 7 minute AMRAMP
            Deadlifts (3, 2, 1)
            Clean press (3, 2, 1)
            Thrusters (3, 2, 1)

I have been working on my pull up more and think I might almost be there! Maybe a little more work but I am getting more determined and am really excited about it. Now, I just have to get brave enough to ask someone to film/photograph me doing some of this stuff. I hate being “that girl” but when you’re a blogger, guess you gotta be sometimes 🙂

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