Friday, February 18, 2011

My 6 months old Nike Zoom Structure Triax 13+ trail running shoes were already too worn out to continue running in it, so I started to look for a new pair of trail running shoes. I'm really happy with Nike, but just out of curiosity I wanted to check what other brands have to offer. I visited several Adidas stores in Jakarta, but they didn't have a single pair of trail running shoes, which was a major surprise. Well, so I got the idea to check what shoes world class trail/ultra runners use and I end up at Anton Krupicka's blog. He happen to be well known ultra-runner and New Balance's Outdoor Ambassador and I really enjoyed reading his Riding the Wind blog. In one blog post he mentions that he runs in New Balance MT101 and MT10, so I checked New Balance web-site. Beside the MT101 and MT10 mentioned by Anton Krupicka, the NB MT876 also looked interesting, so the next thing to do was to buy these shoes and do some test runs. Well, I've visited more than 10 sport shops in Jakarta that sell New Balance shoes and to my surprise, none of them sold New Balance MT101 nor MT878, which should be available! I could only buy some old New Balance models, so unfortunately it looks like New Balance doesn't seem to be interested in Indonesian market.

How about Nike? I went to the Nike store in Grand Indonesia and as expected they had brand-new Nike Zoom Structure Triax+ 14 on stock! This model was released only a few months ago, so it's really great to be able to buy it here. Well, almost, because they did have my size! I visited few other Nike stores with the same result, so I checked 3 sport shops just to be told that usually brand new Nike shoes don't come in my (large) size. Already quite upset about this I visited one more sport store at Plaza Indonesia and to my great surprise, they had Nike Zoom Structure Triax+ 14 my size!!! Well, so here it goes, my new pair of trail running shoes:





After few runs I must say I like these even more than the Triax+ 13s. Same great cushioning but somehow they feel more stable and I think they are also lighter than the previous model. The only thing I could complain about is that mud easily sticks to the bottom of these shoes (same as Triax+ 13), but I think it's a side effect of outstanding traction on slippery surfaces. It's quite amazing how easy it is to run in these shoes on wet stones and slippery trails. Anyway, I'm looking forward to Triax+ 14 GTX, which should be released sometime in October 2011.

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