Do you make a choice to run trails or roads?

[skedaddle]

NO! And this is why I wear some protection on trails. I live in a highly populated area, and often times, I'll run into places where people have had the types of camping trips that involve broken glass. Also, some of the boulders are irregular, and they hide under leaves. Then you step on them... and.... ouch. I trained for a trail marathon wearing a pair of Xero/Invisible Shoes huaraches, and I can honestly say it was not enough shoe for my area. My feet got BEAT UP on my long runs.

As for me, I try to run long on trails on the weekend. However, the nearest trail to my house is 2.5 miles away, but most of the good ones are at least a 30 minute drive. (I only recently discovered the close ones...) This means trail running is a weekend-only proposition for me, like many. So I'm bare on the road (when the weather warms up), and shod on trails.

Thanks for the definitive NO! My common sense tells me it wouldn't be a good idea, but just checking

I'm lucky in several senses. My favourite close by venue, Valley Forge Nat'l Park, has both trails and paved ways in abundance - enough for my needs at least. It would be more diffecult if I were needing 20+ mile trail runs on a regular basis. I am also happy to run in my VFFs if paved conditions or natural surface trails require. My legs and feet seem to do fine going from one to the other, and as I'm not in the least competetive, I don't worry if I am not optimizing. I just want to run happy.

I really like your outlook on things Joseph, switching between shoes and bare does impact me though, even if I think my form is consistent between both, shoes will always cause a little knee pain for me.
I think running happy warrants a thread all of it's own, in the big scheme of things who gives a rats posterior if my PB goes down by a few seconds, so thanks for the grounding, sometimes I loose focus on what's important.

 

[jldeleon]

So my dilemma is should I stick with the roads, carry through the momentum, or risk loosing a lot of my gains by heading for the hills? Would love to know your thoughts, do you choose one way or the other? And if so for what reasons.

It's just like life. Some days you have to "cut loose" and other days you have to "crack down". Run on both. Both have their pros and cons.

As for running through tall grass - I have ran through short and medium grass and lived to tell about it. I'm not sure about tall grass, though if I surveyed a good sampling of it and did not find anything too horrible in it, I would probably take my chances and run through it blindly.