ALTRA Men's AL0A7R6P Olympus 5 Trail Running Shoe, Black/Gray - 9 M US

After buying Timps and Mont Blancs for a while, I switched back to Olympuses after a pair of Timps fell apart on me with just 100 miles or so on them. In the past, the Olympus has felt like a little too much cushion, but the newest version 5, which fits a bit more snugly, feels just right--no more feeling like I'm walking on platform shoes with them on. This is my second pair of the Olympus 5s, and the first are still holding up pretty well after 400 miles or so, which is really good for Altras (sadly, Altra has yet to consistently put out a shoe with no durability concerns), I just decided that with an ultra coming up in a couple of months I should probably start breaking in a new pair of shoes. I do have two minor quibbles about the shoes. First, although the loop in the back of the shoes makes them easy to get on and off, and the loop doesn't dig into the heel (a problem with past models of Olympus), the fact that the loop "leans" away from the heel also leaves the inside of the shoe much more open to leaves, rocks and other debris, so if you are running trails of pretty much any kind you probably need to run with gaiters. The second objection is just cosmetic: the grey/orange color combo looks pretty but the grey looks a lot lighter in real life than it does on the web site, so they start looking dirty very quickly--not that I mind getting dirty, just that the light grey-green color really looks like it's meant for a road shoe rather than something that's going to be trekked through the muck. The Olympuses are, for the moment at least, sadly lacking in the "dusty olive" color option that you can frequently find in their Timps and Lone Peaks--a color that looks like it was born to be run through the mud. Quibbles aside, these get two thumbs up.

This shoe works great for trail hikes. The wide toe box works well for me and provides a comfortable fit, and I get good traction on multiple types of surfaces. I actually use one pair for hiking and another pair for just casual around town wear. My only complaint is that the last two pairs of shoes came with laces that were too short to tie in double knots.