Sunday Discovery and Fluffy Socks

Hey Gang, happy Sunday! My wife and I discovered a new trail today...Well, all they trails we find up here near Paris will be new to us because we are still pretty new here. Anyways, we found an awesome little trail that snakes around some ponds out in the forest of Rambouillet just south of Versailles and I do say that they were lovely. Yes, we are definitely missing out on some hills to climb but we hope we find them soon. The trail started in a quaint little neighborhood and made it's way down into the woods where we passed some hikers and Sunday Picnickers not to mention that they all noticed my sandals. The trail was very well groomed and very enjoyable and we even stumbled upon a pheasant! For the return leg of our loop, we took a direct route in between two crop fields which was called L'Ancienne Route de Chasse which means "Old Hunting Route". This was about 5km in a pot hole infested hay-run; but hey, we didn't have any hills so we made the flat more difficult. We returned to our car in good spirits with 11km finished in just over an hour. We are not the fastest two out there but we are psyched because only a couple of months ago, doing 10km in an hour was soooo hard. Now, it is consistantly attainable. Let's move on to my socks! I have two pairs of Injinji's "toe socks" and for running in sandals they are great when you need them! I have the standard sports socks in the mini-crew's and the outdoor Nuwool mid-weight mini-crew's (shown below). I love both of them and I encourage you to try them for the following reasons.

Fluffy Nuwool Toe Socks by Injinji

1. Cold- When it is cold, the feet will get cold. Put some socks on.
2. You don't like stuff on the trail touching your feet but you love running in sandals (not a problem for me but I am sure it exists for someone out there)
3. Prevent cut and scrapes on gnarly trail run
4. Great for traction in heavy-gooey mud. When squishy, gooey, slimy mud gets between your foot and the sandal the foot seems to want to do nothing but abandon ship and cause you tons of headache.

Number 1 and 4 are my two main reasons for wearing the socks. Number 4 I discovered this last winter after I had a terrible outing in the mud wear I kept slipping and sliding. This can be extremely frustrating because the only way it really is remedied is by dunking your feet into some clean, non-muddy water or by waiting for them to dry. On flat surfaces this is normally not a huge issue however trail running usually involves some sort of pitch in the trail where you are leaning left or right or worse, climbing or descending. Having your laces slammed in between your toes on a descent feels like your foot is a giant piece of cheese getting hacked at by once of those metal wire cheese cutters. Worse is on a steep climb and you slip out of the back of your sandal and you feel like you are running up a soapy mountain side. So, after all of my "blah, blah, blah", the socks are great in the mud and act like souped-up MGT (Monkey Grip Technology) beds for super duper traction. I tried the Nuwool socks today because the weather has been kind of hit and miss the last couple of days. These socks will be my go-to Cadillac socks for the winter. I can't help to have noticed that Injinji released a pair of USA flag socks just recently and I feel they would be an excellent addition to my repetoir especially living abroad. 

Trail was very enjoyable with pretty little canal bridges

Yes, 4km of this in one, very straight line

STRAVA

Is it OK to love fluffy socks as much as I do even though I love to be barefoot as well? Your thoughts below, please. 

Thanks for listening to my rant and reconting of my day and I hope everyone subscribes to the blog and follows along. I have fun writing these and I hope you enjoy reading them! If you do decide to follow by email you will receive a confirmation email from "feeder". Don't be alarmed! It's just me ;)

Cheers folks and à bientôt!