I kept running on Achilles tendonopathy during training for Comrades last year. Bad idea, my left Achilles started tearing and I ended up in a moonboot. 2 months of no running. Its fine now, but as soon as you experience any pain around your Achilles you should back off.
The Speedgoats fit very similar to the Cliftons. Quite narrow and they run half a size smaller than most other shoes. The cushioning of Hoka is amazing, but on the flip side they just feel dead dead dead. For a long trail run that might be good, but I wont buy Hoka road shoes again. The problem we have is that there is a very limited selection of trail shoes in SA. My favorite is still Salomon, but the S Labs are just too firm. The Sense rides are much more comfortable. The toeboxes on Altra and Inov8 are just to roomy. I got terrible foot pain from Innov8 because my toes splaid too much.
Studies are not applicable to real world situations. I ran in minimalist shoes for a year, ended up with two stress fractures, ITBs, Hip problems etc. Changed to cushioned shoes, Clifton and Vomero and almost all my regular injuries disappeared.
There was issues with the Speedgoat1 upper being too hot and not breathable. So on the 2nd generation they made it not durable enough. Hopefully they will find the middle ground on the next release. They've had some durability issues on road shoes as well. The first few Cliftons had issues with the soles collapsing and just feeling dead after a few 100km. I have the Clifton 4 now. After 250km the soles feel fine, but are starting to get ripped apart by the road. I don't see them lasting close to 500km.
I tried doing a treadmill long run during the winter. I stopped at 8km.Running is supposed to be fun, and its more fun running at 4 in the morning, freezing your balls off than running treadmill.
Did my Comrades qualifier on Saturday. The plan was a sub 4. I was well on track going trough halfway in 1h52 and feeling great. But I completely blew apart in the final 7km. Finished in 4h04. In hindsight I think I completely underestimated the route, the final 10km was hell. Will do a sub 4 in the new year..hopefully ????
Its insane. When I saw there was only 4000 entries left I jumped. Plenty of runners on the Comrades group complained that the entries didn't even last to payday ????
Running on the same side the whole time is not good, especially if you have knee and hip niggles. I switch between left, right and center during my run. But I run very early in the morning, so I don't have any issues with traffic.
Yes, last year I entered before qualifying. Then I went into a training frenzy out of excitement and got injured. Now I want to qualify, enter and drink beer until the end of December.
Any formula you find on the net is hogwash. The only way to find out is on the road. The most accurate I could get was on a 5k run. If you dont pass out or puke at the end you didn't go hard enough.
