SHOE REVIEW: LA SPORTIVA HELIOS III

REVIEW BY KARL FORCEY Someone once advised me that you should never race in a new pair of shoes. Wise words, but to hell with that! My La Sportiva Helios IIIs arrived the day before a night-time 21km race in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, which included the notorious “Dungeon”. It was too good an opportunity not to put these shoes through the wringer! La Sportiva is an Italian brand that started way back in 1928. They originally made hand-crafted wooden…

Shoe Review: Hoka One One Mafate Speed 3

REVIEWER: TEGYN ANGEL I’ll be frank, I’ve never been a fan of maximalist shoes for trail running. I spent years being a Hoka Hater before I ever laced a pair up. With that said, I do try to keep a relatively open mind and avoid letting unwarranted bias colour my experience. It just took me a little while to realise I was being the sort of close-minded, self-important zealot I would otherwise write off.   You see, I love mountain running and…

Grit and bare it

Brooks Puregrit 8 “They look, ummm, pretty,” I thought to myself when first unboxing the latest PureGrit from Brooks. I was – to be honesty – slightly disappointed. My general gut feel with trail running shoes is that I want a gnarly veneer. Rough. Ready for the ‘pure grit’ that the Brooks nameplate evoked. Nothing too, well, pretty! It turns out – as often is the way with me and first impressions – I was wrong. Perhaps I’m just too…

Shoe review: Hoka One One Torrent

Torrent on Trail : TRM Editor Chris Ord trail tests the Hoka One One Torrent Everybody loves a mongrel. But nobody likes marketing bollocks. Which is why, when researching the Hoka One One Torrent, I had a giggle. Check out The Ginger Runner’s review of the Torrent and you’ll notice a bad overdubbing – like a kung fu classic with English voice over – whenever he says (obviously in the original filming) “One One”, it’s been overdubbed to “Ohnay Ohnay”….

Shoe review: Salomon Sense Ride 2

Warwick Capper. Or was it Dermott Brereton? Who was the first AFL footballer to dare wear sparkling white boots out on to the (then) mud-pocked footy oval, eighty thousand fans screaming what the f*ck is he wearing?* But then look at the hair, feel the lair, it’s all there, right down to wearing exactly the wrong-colour shoes in exactly the right kind of environment. You can sense the promo peeps from Sards Wondersoap were about to have an apoplectic orgasm…

Shoe review: The North Face Flight Trinity

Does Ironman or, indeed, The Flash (the besuited superheroes) wear trail shoes? I don’t know, but if they do, these are it. Look at them – they scream ‘look at me’ for their sheer red radness. So confident are The North Face adventure architects that – in the men’s at least – they are only offered in three colours. Red, red and red. Women only get two: blue and grey. I almost expect them Transformer-like to unfurl into small killer…

Trail Shoe Review: On Cloudventure

New to the scene Down Under and even to trails, it’s perhaps surprising that On Running – a Swiss company more well known for road and tri footwear – has cranked out a decent first up offering for the dirty mob. Surprising that is until you realise the chieftains at On are actually trail runners… Review: Chris Ord  **This review appears in Edition #31 of Trail Run Mag, available as single edition purchase here or subscribe today, here.** Velcro. The modern…

Shoe Review: The North Face Flight RKT

Did I just kick a skunk? Or eat licorice allsorts and throw up on my feet? Or did someone just inject heroin between my toes?    Without wanting to glamourise drugs of addiction, it must be the latter because 1. I love animals (so I would never kick one, plus there are no skunks in Australia to kick); 2. I hate licorice allsorts (especially the black and white ones that would have resulted in such a vomitus display); and 3. my…

SHOE REVIEW – SALOMON S/LAB ULTRA

*Review from Edition 28 Trail Run Mag available at www.trailrunmag.com/subs How do you follow up a hit record? That is, the original Salomon S/Lab Ultra (this new one is, well, new, even though it has the exact same name- they dropped the ‘2’ designation) was the best-selling S/ Lab shoe of all time. It obviously hit the mark on trail and on the showroom floor. So when something’s working what do you change in the quest for never-ending improvement? With…

Watch Preview: Suunto 9

TRM get a sneak peak of Suunto’s 9, their next-gen Multisport GPS Watch designed to go very, very long. Two years on from our preview of the Suunto Spartan Ultra, we’re proud to announce the Suunto 9 (S9), the next generation of Suunto GPS Smart Watches. In keeping with Suunto’s long tradition of producing premium quality tools for the outdoors, the S9 builds on the Spartan’s refined, suit-and-tie aesthetic with a spread of upgrades, improvements and function-focused new features tailored…