Beat-up But Best

I've blipped my Merrells a few times. The Road Gloves and Trail Gloves are wonderful running shoes, and the Tough Gloves are great for work. However, I think these are still my very favourite shoes - just not really running shoes. They have a completely flat and extremely thin sole, and before I even knew about forefoot landing, noticed that they encouraged what I noted as a very light feeling: in fact ... forefoot landing.

Though they are inside shoes, I have worn them outside rather a lot; the resultant scars are quite apparent.

This photo (larger here) was something of a demonstration to me of the importance of getting the exposure right in camera. I took some photos before this, that really just didn't work. I had some bracketed exposures, and tried layering those, and duplicate layers, and different blend modes, and exposure correction and curves and such ... Absolutely no good. So I took them outside again, faced them the other way, getting better light, and made sure I got one exposure close to right (yes I know the cream door behind them is blown-out; that I couldn't avoid without under-exposing the shoes). That needed almost nothing in terms of processing (no surprise there).

5km run today: I ran up and around and met mrs tsuken and the kids at the pool/gym. Felt good. 8) Again however, instructive to note that I ran that 5km slower than the last place-getter in the men's Olympic 10km. xP

Edit: to clarify, I mean I ran my 5km slower than said last place-getter ran the whole 10km. I'm not just talking pace; I'm talking the whole run. xP

Speaking of that Olympic 10k race, I watched it twice, and didn't really grasp what happened the first time: I wondered Why Kenenisa Bekele didn't kick at the end. Second time round I saw that he did kick, and kick hard; it's just that Mo Farah, Galen Rupp, and his little brother Tariku Bekele kicked just as hard. That was some seriously impressive running. I have to say I was amazed to see whitey up there with the East Africans. ;-) Awesome run by Galen Rupp.

Women's marathon starting soon - I'm looking forward to that.