Saucony Peregrine

 “Minimalist” is marketing slogan gold nowadays in the running shoe world and everyone’s slapping that word on as many models of shoes as they can. Saucony is marketing their new trail shoe, the Peregrine, as their new, minimalist, trail shoe. It’s really not “minimalist,” it’s just really light for a trail shoe. It’s pretty much a road shoe with a bigger outsole (the Peregrine is based off their Kinvara road shoe). Because of that, it fits and fells like a road shoe – very tight around the foot with no slop.

This shoe is built to be fast, like the bird of prey it’s named after, and I’d say Saucony hit the mark in that respect. This shoe is super light with great grip from the lugs on the outsole. The thing to keep in mind, though, is that the light weight meant less material and less material means less protection for your foot.

The upper mesh is about as thin as possible, meaning it doesn’t keep dirt and rocks out as well as bigger shoes do and it doesn’t feel like there’s a rock plate in the midsole, but apparently there is. You definitely feel the trail in these shoes. The shoe's also doesn't make me feel as planted on the ground with each stride because of the narrowness of it. A wider shoe would have been heavier.

The lacing is nice and pulls the shoe around your foot well and I haven’t had trouble with the laces coming untied. Also, the tongue is sown into the outer mesh, which is always good for a trail shoe - as that does help with the rocks and dirt issue.

I wore this shoe for a 15 mile trail race and a 50 mile trail race, and for me, this isn’t a shoe to wear for an ultra, at least not one longer than a fast 50k. It was awesome for the 15 mile race (I won the race), but my feat got really beat up in the 50 mile race. The trails I on was on for that 50 weren’t very rugged, either. For my delicate feet, the Peregrine was just too soft for that length of a race. I was wearing them in a size 9.5, which is my normal shoe size, so if I were wearing them in a size 10, I might not have blistered on my left big toe like I did.

I know some elite ultra runners will like super light shoes and their feet can take it, even over 100 miles, but they train 40 hours a week while us normal people are at a job 40 hours a week. I do plan to wear the Peregrine’s for a 50k I have in two weeks, but that is a fast 50k on well groomed trails. For my attempt at the San Diego 100, I’m going to go back to the tried and true Cascadias.