#44 - The Mines Charity Run 2013 + New Balance Minimus Trail Zero

Yes, yes - despite the quasi-barefoot shoe that is featured up there, I still can't go sockless. It's... yucky.

The Race

This year's edition of The Mines Charity Run is my second time joining, and I believe is also the second edition, with 2012 being the inaugural race, and I'm happy to report that there are a lot of changes (good ones) that has been made. The only not-so-good part of it is the race shirt: a pseudo dry fit shirt that only absorbs all your sweat and weigh you down as you eat up the kilometer.

Not good. So I had to wear my own shirt.

Do I... do I... look raring to go, or retarded here?

The good part of the race however is the new route, which snakes through the housing area of Taman Sungai Besi Indah, which was for the most part... refreshing. Away from the traffic, the run was mostly idyllic. The road was mostly narrow, however.

Then at the end of the race, unlike last year's in which only the top 100 receives a finisher's medal and certificate, all runners got their medal and cert. The medal is fucking huge.

Pictured here eating away on one side of the bib, trying to get to the Subway voucher...

And as pictured above, those are all the things that you receive at the end of the race. Except for the Subway voucher, which is a really nice touch, where it was given at random to a lucky 500 runners only.

Holy shit, I'm one of the lucky runners!

Breakfast was also provided, which, just like last year's, is a packet of nasi lemak. Quite good though. And, making a usual appearance at the end of many races is the ever-popular Milo truck, giving away cups of refreshing cold Milo.

Thank youuu...

A surprising inclusion though, was this:

You can now enjoy your post-race recovery with a nice warm cup of non-fairly traded capitalism brew!

Good coffee though. (Spoiler alert: not a coffee lover)

The Shoe

First of all, a caveat: don't be fooled by the name, for that even though it is known as the Minimus Trail Zero, only two of the adjectives are true, while one falls short of expectation. The Minimus name is synonymous among New Balance users/owners with a line of minimalist shoes that are designed to offer a much more 'engaging' running experience to the runner. The shoe that I have here, as pictured above, certainly fits the minimalist bill here, and pretty impressively. Weighing at 4.4 ounces, it's among the lightest running shoe that you can buy right now.

The rubber lugs on the outsole provides a lot of feedback and feel from the ground so running in this feels almost like the real thing - running barefooted. But that then is where the nature of my complain rests: the excellent ground feel is contributed by the lack of a rock plate and, not that I am an authority of trail running, but knowing how rugged the Malaysian trail could be, running around in a shoe with a rock plate is heaven sent. This shoe, if one is not careful, could end one runner's race in blood.

However, as a road running shoe that offers a near-barefoot feel, this shoe performs admirably. But then again, there is one more thing about this shoe that I have to type in here: it feels ordinary, it feels understated, there is nothing special or remarkable about the shoe. It's just some shoe, and it's pretty forgettable. There is no part of the shoe that stands out and makes it feel special.

It's a pedestrian, hackneyed, mediocre, humdrum, insipid, bromidic, old hat, platitudinous footwear. And it's endemic to all their running shoes as well. It's no wonder then that, in spite of their tireless promotion, New Balance in Malaysia remains relatively obscure.