Late Tuesday afternoon I, my wife, son, daughter and my brother hopped in the van and went on a bit of a road trip. We headed down to Fargo from Winnipeg for a quick supper and some shopping at Scheels for running shoes. Then we headed back to Grand Forks to grab a hotel before shopping away the day yesterday (Wednesday).
My main goal on the trip was to grab some extra shoes. My outdoor pair will probably be topped out on the mileage by next week and my current treadmill pair will be done by the end of August. I do have one pair of Nike Pegasus 30 LEs in reserve but they will go in service shortly. With the mileage I have planned for the Dopey Challenge training, I will need new shoes by the end of September for sure. The Nike’s I usually wear (Pegasus – have gone through 6-7 pairs in the past year and a half and probably 20 in total – love them!) are $30 cheaper in the US versus here in Canada – with Nike making significant changes to the Pegasus shoes for version 31 I wanted to make sure to pick up a pair as cheaply as I could in case the changes did not work for me. Scheels quite often has discounts on previous model versions as well so I have sometimes found my shoes for half the cost of what I would pay in Winnipeg.
Unfortunately this trip they didn’t have any Pegasus shoes in the discount area but they did have a pair of Nike Structure 17s in my size. After some quick research I realized that those might be a good idea to try – the added support and slight over pronation correction as well as similar cushioning to what I am used to with the Pegasus could really help my knee issues I have been having lately without overly changing the type of shoe I use. So I picked those up for about $60 cheaper than the Canadian price. I figured the reduced price would make these shoes a worthwhile experiment.
I also wanted to try out a Nike Pegasus 31 – the toe to heel differences and other changes they have made from the 30s could significantly change the shoe and the 20% shoe sale Scheels had on top of the difference between US and Canadian prices means I was able to pick up a pair for $55 less than the current Canadian price.
Interesting thing with the 31 over the 30 was that the toe box was a lot tighter – on the 30s (and many previous versions) I use a 12 and can work with a 12.5 but with the 31 the 12s were just way too tight around the toes for me. Unfortunately Scheels didn’t have a 12.5 to try but they did have a 13 which might be a bit big but seems ok. So it looks like the 31s run 0.5-1 shoe size tighter than what they had been for the 30s (so you could need 0.5 to 1 shoe size greater than previous versions).
I walked into the store wearing a pair of 29s and I could immediately notice the changes for the toe – heel height – I am very interested to see how this will affect my runs. I will be testing these soon.
Scheels also had a new store opened up in Grand Forks (in the Columbia Mall) just recently and they were running grand opening specials there that included 20% off shoes – and they had a pair of Pegasus 30s in my size (12 for this version of the shoe) …so I picked up a pair of those as well. Funny thing this pair is now my 4th set of the exact same colour pattern – 3rd pair is my current treadmill set, 2nd got me through Goofy Challenge in January (and are now my yard shoes) and first set was for training last fall (and my Goofy Challenge backups / walking around pair).
So I came out of this trip with 2 shoes to experiment with and a known quantity…all for less than 2 pairs would have cost me in Canada – in the end the price difference paid for the hotel room for the night (and my wife got to do some shopping as well). All in all, a productive trip!
If both the Pegasus 31s and the Structure 17s work out, this gives me enough shoes to make it through my summer and fall training into the Dopey Challenge with some room to spare. So shouldn’t need to buy any more until after the Dopey is done!
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