A tale of many surfaces – Altra Lone Peak Review

Do you have some running items that you love so much you’d buy them again? Or maybe you actually bought more than one because you were afraid that they’d stop making it. (Or like me, you bought more than one because you couldn’t find the one you had.) That’s our topic for Tuesdays on the Run this week: Oldies but Goodies.

I have a few items like that – my Skirt Sports Happy Girl skirts, my Brooks Essential Run Nightlife Jacket (I actually regularly consider buying another color of this), my Amphipod handheld water bottle (I have actually replaced this 3 times and now have 2 of them…) But instead I need to rave about a new item I received recently: the Altra Lone Peak NeoShell shoes.

Source: Altra Lone Peak NeoShell

I’m not a trail runner. I’ve only ever run two intentional trail races – North Face half and the Altra trail race at the Runner’s World Festival (and a handful of unintentional ones: Deschutes 10k in Bend and a few Mainly Marathon races.) So, when Altra offered me the chance to try out the new Altra Lone Peak, I was kind of on the fence. I mean, I wasn’t likely to get to try them on a real trail. But they suggested that it might be a good shoe for days when the pavement was wet or snowy, so I agreed.

Since we were experiencing a warmer than usual winter, I took them with me to Wisconsin. Wisconsin did not disappoint me and gave me a snowy day to take them out.

I loved them – the Altra Lone Peak handled the couple of inches of powdery snow like a champ. I didn’t slip at all and my feet were toasty warm and did not get wet at all.

But I sadly packed them away as we returned to warm weather and dry ground in Virginia. I didn’t know if I’d get to wear them at all, but I harbored a secret hope that we’d get a few inches and I could try them out again. Apparently I should have told Snowzilla that by a “few inches” I meant less than 10 (definitely less than the 20+ we received).

But thanks to Snowzilla, I’ve fallen in love with the Altra Lone Peak all over again. Not only do they have the usual foot shaped forefoot and zero drop that Altra is known for, but they also have a Sticky-Rubber TrailClaw outsole (which means they have amazing traction) and a Polartec NeoShell upper which is somehow both waterproof and breathable, both of which I can attest to.

As per usual, a big snow dump in Virginia has been followed by a warm up. Add in lots of unplowed streets (including mine, sigh), and semi-plowed streets combined with completely dry pavement and you get a very unpredictable route. Regular running shoes will result in fall on your rear, but Yaktrax don’t work because there are entire blocks of clean pavement.

Enter the Altra Lone Peak. I swear it was designed for my neighborhood after a snow fall. I wore them to shovel a ridiculous amount of snow from around my Honda Pilot. (Before picture)

I wore them to help push a neighbor’s car off of our snowbound street onto the main road. I wore them for a 3 mile run where I went from snow to slush to dry pavement and back again multiple times.

Finally, I wore them for a 2 mile walk on varied snowy surfaces to get my son from a friend’s house.

I slipped exactly 1 time – when I stepped on black ice. I stepped in a puddle that would have soaked any other running shoe but walked away with a dry foot.

Seriously these shoes were AWESOME! So awesome that I thought about buying another pair, but really how often does it snow here? (Maybe I shouldn’t ask that. We all see what asking for a few inches of snow did to me…)

What are your “Oldies but Goodies?” Or do you have a recent find like my Altra Lone Peak that you are totally in love with???

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Disclaimer: I was given these shoes to review. All opinions are my own.