Asics Gel Kinsei

Today is the product placement posting of my blog where I shamelessly evangelize for my corporate sponsors.

I have been among the early users of the new Asics Gel Kinsei thanks to my longtime friend Terry Schalow. Terry is the head of North American product development for Asics. Terry and the Asics engineering team in Kobe, Japan have been working on the Gel Kinsei for over five years. The development of the Kinsei, which means "golden star" could probably best be compared to NASA's Mercury and Apollo space programs in terms of the overall technical scope and in terms of generating a variety of engineering breakthroughs such as the breathable mesh uppers.

I have found the Kinsei to be a great blend of cushioning and stability. I have dramatically increased the distance of my long runs over the past month and it is great to have shoes that absorb all this pounding, and at the same time work on faster tempo runs.

And continuing on the product placement theme let me put in a plug for my wonderful Orca wetsuit from my superb triathlon colleagues Rieko and Mike Trees, who are in charge of Asia operations for Orca.

Of course I have been forced to buy lots of other gear for the triathlon, but I am not really a gear person. I can't even figure out how to set the time of day on my heart rate monitor, let alone the two-hundred and some other functions. My new Shimano bike shoes look slick, but I do not notice any performance difference versus the clunky bike touring shoes I always wore.


Today is also one of those inevitable postings where I look at my training and my schedule and think to myself - "I am doomed, doomed, doomed, doomed.... I haven't done nearly enough training to date and now things are getting even busier for me...." Crossing the international dateline on the flight from San Franciso to Tokyo yesterday meant that I lost another whole day of training and the lateness of my flight prevented me from participating in the beer mile workout, a training session that no doubt would have been ideal preparation for the inevitable nausea and trauma that comes from the eating and running in the later stages of an ironman triathlon.


Anyway, my week 9 (January 29 to February 4) training totals -

Swim 4:00 / 7 kilometers
Bike 6:00 / 140 kilometers
Run 4:00 / 40 kilometers
Total 14:00 hours