Doing this for the first time, bucket list you know… do you folks with the experience at this race advise regular trail shoes or some spikes like a cross country shoe?
thanks
Ryan
Regular trail shoes. Too many rocks and roots for spikes.
Hokas last year, brooks pure flow in the rain the year before.
I raced this year in Adidas Hagios. So a good old fashioned road racing flat. I was fine for the F1 distance. I probably had the 3rd fastest overall run time and second fastest last leg. So you don’t need a really rugged shoe like you might for an adventure race. AmZof is brutal but more so for the elevation gain/loss than the terrain. And about the race is on the carriage trails where you can really open it up so you don’t want to “give up” time on those sections with something really heavy.
There are a few relatively sections of rocks, etc. The Hagios were a little light on underfoot protection. It obviously didn’t ruin my day and we’re probably talking about a few ouch’s in total over the my ~2hrs of running. Spikes aren’t necessary for traction and I think you’d want a little more support than a pure XC spike. You will be running 15mi and those XC spikes generally are good for 10K or less.
I think a light trail shoe is the way to go. Something like the Inov-8 or the Salomon’s. I’m probably going to switch up and get something that provides a little more underfoot protection, like a think rock plate, and maybe some modest lugs for grip. Having said that, I’m definitely going to be looking for something less than 7oz’s.
Hope this helps.
Great info thanks… somehow imagined a little more mud than carriage road so good to know
half on carriage trails… all the “up” is on trails. Almost all the down is on carriage trails or pretty well maintained trails. So you’re going slowest for the parts that are roughest so you don’t need quite as much protection. The carriage trails are great to run on. A little grip would be nice - they have some loose gravel on the top - but you can really open it up. The hardest part about AmZof is that you can go from running +9min mile to sub-6min with almost no transition.
I have used Kinvara’s (in both F1’s) and A4’s (in CWD last year), you can certainly do it in a regular road shoe and I got away with a racing flat. One thing I was concerned with was the holes on the bottom of the A4’s on the carriage trails so I used two old pairs, one for each leg just in case a rock got wedged in there. Next year I’ll caulk the holes up, which is what I did on the recommendation of a friend at SOS this year and it worked great. Like denali said, on the ups you are pretty much reduced to power hiking at times so you don’t need much protection.