I spent time over the holidays in Austin, Texas. Austin has some wonderful trails and greenways. I entered the Barton Springs Greenbelt at its Zilker Park trailhead, parking the car near the Barton Springs Pool facility.

I have to digress and mention that Zilker Park is just great. Children and adults alike can entertain themselves for hours. Besides the wide open spaces and nature trails, there is an awesome playground, ball fields, a train, and even climbing rocks. Notable events that happen there include the Zilker Park Kite Festival and the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

So back to the running... I had not traveled very far along the trail before finding rocks sticking out of the path. At this point I was already glad that I had opted to wear my Altra Lone Peak trail shoes. It turns out that these scattered rocks were only a small taste of what was to come.



And then the trail became rockier...

The other day I snapped a photo of the awesome wall of shoes at Lloyd Clarke Sports:





This really deserves a wide angle lens rather than my little smart phone camera.

The shoe choices are amazing and include many minimalist shoes. I continue to hope that they will start carrying Altra Zero Drop shoes.

A few people have asked how many shoes I have. Ever since running became one of my primary recreational activities, shoes have become a significant hobby of mine. I used to spend money on things like video games and computer gadgets. Now I spend money on shoes.

Here is a picture of all of the shoes that I originally bought for the purpose of running (Oops! Missing from the photo are Nike Free Run+ which I gave away. Also missing are my bare feet!):



Pictured Top Row (from Left to Right): Mizuno Wave Universe 3 (MWU3), Vibram FiveFingers (VFF) Bikila, New Balance Minimus Road MR10, Adidas Kanadia 3, Invisible Shoes huarache sandals

Pictured Bottom Row (from Left to Right): Soft Star Shoes RunAmoc DASH Smooth, Soft Star RunAmoc LITE, Soft Star Moc3, Inov-8 Bare-X 150, Altra Instinct, Altra Instinct black, Altra Adam, Altra Lone Peak

And here is the mileage that I have on each shoe:

On Thanksgiving I ran the local Gainesville Turkey Trot 10k, sponsored by Lloyd Clarke Sports.

I chose to race in my Soft Star RunAmoc DASH shoes, pictured here with the race t-shirt:



A significant portion of the course was beautiful grass or trail. It very much reminded me of a High School Cross Country course. There were nice arrows painted every few meters and some sections were marked with tape:



My RunAmocs (with the 5mm trail sole) really enjoyed the grass. Out of all my shoes, these RunAmocs with the Vibram trail sole get the best traction on surfaces that look like this:

Saturday I ran the 2011 Tom Walker Memorial Half Marathon. The race course travels along the scenic Gainesville-Hawthorne trail, a nice out-and-back course on a paved bike path.

It was a cold crisp morning (around 40 degrees at the start), but the temperature was destined to go up 10-15 degrees during the race. After diligently checking the hourly weather forecast, I think I handled the temperatures perfectly, wearing a jacket at the start and shedding it after the first mile or so. Here I am cruising along beside Meredith Defranco fairly early in the race:


Photo copyright Martin McCrory Photography.

I had some stomach trouble a couple of days before the race so I think my energy stores were low. I did my best to keep up on the gatorade. I really need to learn how to drink out of a paper cup and not slop it all over myself or half-drown myself. I lost more than a couple seconds dealing with beverages at the aid stations.

I am very happy with my race since my performance was a huge PR at this distance. I improved my time by over 20 minutes from the previous year. I managed to run pretty consistent splits, I didn't go out too fast and stayed within my aerobic capacity for most of the race.

My performance was good enough to earn 2nd in my age group and 5th overall.

The finish line photo captured my official time of 1:29:51 (average pace 6:51 per mile):