Petestack Blog

So I bought all these sale-price shoes a few weeks ago, but the Flyrocs were a mistake and I doubt I’ll be buying any more Inov-8s. Fortunately, however, I’ve found a buyer for the unused Flyrocs and got myself a pair of Mizuno Wave Harrier 2s instead. A shoe that I thought worth trying after hearing good things from Iain Ridgway before tracking down a solitary sale pair in (last year’s?) yellow at £40 + P&P from Achilles Heel in Glasgow. And, when I say a solitary pair, I mean that the only available pair at that price just happened to be my size (11.5 UK/46.5 Euro, which luckily appears to be a perfect match for my 11 UK/46.5 Euro Asics when Iain tells me he takes a 10 UK in both and I’d probably have been looking for an 11 if I’d been thinking straight!). So they arrived today, fit comfortably out of the box, take my custom orthotics very nicely and appear to suit my broad, ugly and congenitally abnormal feet better than any Inov-8 or Walsh. Meaning that, for the first time in ages, I’ve actually got some serious off-road shoes I might prefer to my Asics for the kind of terrain where I’m needing serious off-road soles!

So that’s the shoes, and I’m looking forward to trying these ASAP. But I was also going to talk about my orthotics, because I just got a new pair to supplement my now well-worn original two with this year’s ultras in mind, and can get another if I order the insoles myself (which I’ve been attempting to do, but not yet found available to non ‘healthcare professionals’) and give them to the podiatrist for modification. Speaking of which, it’s worth noting that, with the crucial 7° (might even be 8°) wedges on the existing pairs holding up remarkably well but the rest of the insoles starting to go after a good couple of years, I did discuss the possibility of me reusing said wedges on stock insoles and wasn’t told not to (just that I’d lose some of the advantages of the medical ones if I did). Something else I’d never noticed before lining up all the insoles to photograph tonight is that the grey and beige components of the wedges on my existing pairs have been layered the opposite way round, but can truthfully say after so many miles on both pairs that I’ve never noticed a difference in performance between them. What’s potentially most significant of all to me, however, is whether they’re going to spare me the injury problems I had both before and (for a long time) after the 2007 WHW Race when I never had them and didn’t even know I needed them. And, you know what, something’s telling me they might just!