Salomon XR Crossmax

I decided to give a new style of Salomon’s a shot.  A lot of hype had been surrounding the new Salomon XR Crossmax shoe – it was the shoe that would get you to the trails straight from home via pavement.  As most know it can be tough running on roads in your trail runners to get to your favorite trail.  Generally trail runners don’t offer the cushioning or lightness of a road running shoe.  I have a 3km road section to get onto the Bruce trail in Crawford Lake/Rattlesnake conservation areas, where I can do a nice 15K trail loop before running another 3km of roads home.  I figured these digs would be perfect for those runs.  In addition, I was also looking for a great racing shoe for the 4-day APEX adventure race in Switzerland.  Normally I wouldn’t wear anything other than the XT Wings or XA Pros for an expedition adventure race but since I knew AR in Europe typically cover a lot of well-travelled trails and roads and required very little to no bushwhacking, I also thought these shoes might be ideal for that race as well.

Unfortunately due to a lingering injury I wasn’t able to test out the XR Crossmax on my local road – Bruce trail – road training run before flying out to Switzerland.  I normally don’t race in brand new shoes but I had a lot of faith in Salomon since I’d been wearing them for 6+ years and wasn’t worried about developing any ‘new shoe’ blisters.  So my intial test would be a signficant one – at the APEX race.  The race featured a prologue where we had significant amount of paved road running on an airstrip, along with some mountain trail running on fire roads and singletrack.  It was very hot, around 25C.  It was fast-paced and every second counted towards your rank so speed was paramount.  Did I mention road running was involved?  I was sooooo happy I had brought these shoes, even if they had only been for the prologue, they had already scored huge points in my books.  I could immediately feel the difference versus trail runners – how light they were and the cushioning on the pavement.  They made the transition from asphalt to trail and back seamlessly, again and again.  Their breathability was also not unnoticed as some racers were already developing hotspots in their trail runners on this hot day, but not mine. 

Finishing the prologue I decided these would also be my shoes of choice for the incredible APEX alpine trek, which covered serious amounts of elevation gain/decent, peaking at 2970m at the snow-covered Shilthorn in the Burnese Alps.  17-hrs later, through heat, hail, snow and rain the shoes and I emerged without any blisters or foot issues.  I also had minimal foot bruising unlike many other racers likely due to the cushioning on all those seamingly endless mountain decents.

I am happy to say after taking them to the APEX race, I have also been able to test them out locally where they excel in an environment mixing trail and road.  I’m not sure I would do many Ontario or US adventure racing (with signficant amounts of bushwhacking) with these – for those I will stick to my XT Wings – but for training and races featuring a lot of hard-packed road surfaces or trails, these shoes are perfect.

If you haven’t checked them out, please do so and take them for a stroll around your favorite trail…  I think you’ll be very happy with these!  They can be found here and at your local Running Free.