Today, defeated by a dilemma which had colour on one horn and the cutting edge of technology on the other, I cut my losses and bought a pair of Vivibarefoot Evo II running shoes.

SportsDirect.com had been selling Vivos in women’s sizes for a while at ridiculously low prices: Breathos and Ultras at £20 and Evos at £25. When they eventually got some men’s sizes in I saw they had Evo IIIs but, guilted by already having two pairs of shoes and invalided out of training, I held off buying any. Then they had a 10% off sale and all their stock vanished (probably ended up on ebay).

Since then I’ve been checking daily to see if they got any new stock and today they did (probably returns). And they had a pair of Evo IIIs but in boring black and white:

They also had a pair of Evo IIs in a much more exciting Red:

Which to choose? Style or technology? It was settled for me when I came back from lunch and the IIIs had gone out of stock again, so I promptly bought the red IIs. I just checked and the IIIs are back in stock, ho hum.

So why another pair of shoes? Well one of the pairs I currently have are Karrimor Trail shoes with lots of thick gel midsole and support etc. The other pair, my favourites, are Vivo Breathos which are also a trail shoe. I’m starting to do a lot more training on the road and the half marathon is on the road as well, of course, so I thought rather than wear out the cleats on the Breathos making them useless on trails, I’d get a pair of Vivo Evos for road running. The sooner the better so that I can get used to them.

As an aside I never run in the Karrimors any more. I sometimes use them for the gym, but after wearing Vivos I find that they push my toes together too much. The Vivos really let them spread out.

In other news, I signed up for Garmin Connect on the recommendation of Nachthawk in readiness for when I get a chance to solder up a data cable (my 2nd hand garmin came without). I’m looking forward to comparing this against Runkeeper which I really like using but swear at a lot, mainly when I’m trying to edit a route.