Nike LunarTrainer+ Review

This is long overdue. The initial 5km run did not allow me to fully judge the shoe's performance over a distance longer than 10km.

Then came Desaru. I did not see any other more suitable occasion to put the shoe to test.

Nevermind i had a crappy race that day (and i am still recovering from the blister from Kenyir), this entry is about the shoe.

I guess i've done enough write up on the shoe outlook here.

The few comments from a few person that tried my pair on before the race says that the shoe looked funny, with it's large fluorosent sole protruding like Ronald MacDonald on his Gay-er days.

Well, What can i say?

Ronald MacDonald did had his Gay day!

Anyway. As soon as i came in from 90km cycling, i changed socks and make sure that the gauze protecting my blisters wound are in the propoer location and position. The last thing i wanted to happen is that the wound brushes against the shoe and i end up with a brown patch on the shoe's rear (green + red = brown?)

THe first 3km was great. Infact after 2km of swim and 90km of bike, the plushness of the LunarTrainer was really a good change. Every stride i took seems to be running on pillow, literally. I was doing a 5:00 pace the first 3K and stayed within 1km from Adzim.

Well, that is until by some stroke of fate, the heels suddenly hada sharp pain and i know instantly my race is as good as gone.

the gauze, because it was raining during cycling, made them super compressed and there are nothing but just a piece of (gauze?) cloth between the shoe and the wound.

I slowed down from those good pace as the pain was just too much to bear.

Then heaven opened up. Sending torrential rain down and cool off all the runners.

The LunarTrainer had a chance to see how it perform in the wet.

Now, lets rewind a lil, the LunarTrainer has damn kaw plush cushioning.

And i remember Jakull Xcalibur7th telling me that the cushioning is so plush it actually absorb all the energy, and did not left any to rebounce back.

So, Newton's third law did not take place.

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction"

LunarTrainer did so well absorbing all the pounding you gave to it that there was no more energy left to rebounce you back.

And when it gets wet...it is like running on a pair of sloshing sponge.

But that did not stop me. The blister wound did.



You can see pretty much that my pace when i was running was pretty much at the same pace except those instances that i was reduced to walking speed to ease the pain.

I got so much energy left after the run that i did not feel as if i did a half ironman distance. Infact i drove back and still managed to clean up all the gears and did laundry.

The shoe worked fine. It cushioned as it should, and more (the support the shoe gave was great, it was really stable, maybe because of the Ronald MacDonald's sole).

Now, all Nike need to do is to put in some "control" measure to reduce the cushioning slightly while assisting in energy return. That would had made the LunarTrainer perfect.

Then again, it might be on purpose, afterall, it's a TRAINER and if the TRAINER makes you work harder than your usual run, thus buidling more muscle, and when you don the LunarRacer aka Apollo, you might just fly.

Whatever it is, this shoe is more than fit to run 21km in. No doubt it could bring you to the MLD (Medium Long Distance) of 30KM and maybe i should slot this in for next year's KLIM and see if it is possible to run this for 42.2km eh?

Before i log off for today. Here is my official Desaru Timing:

Swim : 00:51:45
T1+Bike : 03:05:33
T2+Run : 02:48:10
Total : 06:45:28

I am damn proud of my swim. This is my 4th swim this year. Bike was slower by a good 14 minutes compared to last year, partly because i spent time to put the plaster on properly. And the run, the most dissapointing aspect of the race. I might as well just go and cycle anohter 90km and it won't make much differences to my finishing time.

It is a race to forget, but i can't seems to forget it.