The Author’s Feet After a Taper Run on the Not-So-Mean Streets of Brooklyn
Since we are less than two weeks away from marathon Sunday in NYC, running is often on my mind. That being the case, I figured that I might as well drop a couple of running related posts in the interim. We’ll kick it off with a review (of sorts) for the Nike Alphalfy 3, which will be my race shoe this year. Amusingly (probably only to me) the colorway is very similar to the Air Zoom Alphafly NEXT% that I wore to train for the race in 2021, one of the earlier models with a “flyplate”. I ordered this particular pair of Alphafly 3’s the first day that they were released along with a pair of Vaporfly’s. Just to be clear, this is not at all sponcon. In fact, I actually ordered the Alphafly 3 Blueprint in the same order, which mysteriously never shipped (Nike did eventually give me a refund). But I paid full boat for all of these kicks.
Most of my 10 week training program this year was was wearing either the Vaporfly or a Pegasus Turbo (review forthcoming). The Vaporfly was awesome, but wore out quickly. I actually ended up burning up two pairs of them during training this year. I’ll blame the early demise of the first pair to the fact that Delaware County decided to “repave” the entire western Catskills with slurry seal. I spent the majority of the month of August in the Catskills this year and as a result put in a lot of slurry seal miles on those bad boys. That stuff eats up the outsole of a shoe like it is nobody’s business. Also dangerous as hell for motorcycles. But that is a story for a different day.
Back to the Alphafly 3; I broke them out for the first time on Saturday mostly to acclimate myself to them a bit. It was an 8 miler across the Williamsburg Bridge and back. I’m here to say that the hype is warranted. They perform as well (or better) than the Vaporfly, but feel a lot more like a full support shoe in the heel. As I tend to do this time every year that I run NYC, I’m still having a lot of doubts and anxiety about how I will do on Marathon Sunday. But I’m glad to know that my shoe choice is not the thing that will be a distraction on race day.
A few more snaps below-
