Benson Knott and a pair of Inov-8 Bare Grip 200's
We have been offline with our blog since April of this year (2011), but we will now endevour to bring you regular updates and posts, to keep your juices flowing making sure you are as titilated as we are about the outdoors, be it running, walking, climbing or anything else we or you may get upto in the outdoors.
I (Charlie) have just been for a lunchtime run & I swore to myself back in January when we moved from our Windermere Shop to our Kendal Online Office, that I would run up Benson Knott as regularly as I could, I told myself at least 3 times a week... how hard could that have been? Well for one reason or another I failed, misrabley... but its Autumn now and so leaves are falling, so I am turning over (another, as always) new leaf.
And so back to my little run, well I have been up Benson Knott, ran all the way for the first time this year, and it felt great, but.... more to the point, I was wearing my well loved and looked after Inov-8 Baregrip 200's. You can wear these without socks if you like, so this is what I did. To get to the top of Benson Knott from our office, you run through 2 fields, then road for a mile or so, then out onto the open fell, so a mix of grass, tarmac and rough fell. The Bare Grip is great for this type of running, apart from the road you may argue... but.... I will disagree. This is my second pair of Bare Grips, I trashed the first pair whilst planning the Saunders Mountain Marathon earlier in the year running through too much rough sharp scree. When I trashed the uppers, the studs were hardly worn, and when you look at them you realise they are flat, very aggressive, but flat no the less. And so I thought, why can't you justy run on the road, unlike the Mudclaw 272 or the Mudclaw 333 which have great studs for fell use but if used on the road or hard tracks they wear down very quickly, these little puppies will take the punishment of a harder surface without wearing away so fast. Well thats the idea anyway.
The Bare Grips performed just as well on the road as on the fell. This is my first mixed run in them, but I an betting that the studs will still be in very good condition by the time the uppers have had it, but lets see. I will keep using them for running up and down Benson Knott, and give you regular updates on the state of the sole unit and outsole (comprising of those wonderful flat studs).
