Adventures at the Nike Outlet Store

My partner’s parents live near the Dixie Outlet Mall in Mississauga, and we stop there fairly often. Much of my wardrobe consists of weird castoffs that Tommy Hilfiger couldn’t sell in his normal stores, Levi’s 501 jeans purchased at 50% off markup, and weird odds and ends from Winner’s.

But for some reason I’d never thought to investigate the Nike Outlet Store. Until one fateful day in February, that is.

I went in expecting to find a bunch of “lifestyle” sneakers and basketball shoes. I definitely wasn’t expecting to find running-nerd shoes like track spikes. But the first thing my eyes landed on when I entered the store was a pair of Nike Zoom Victory Elite 2s. I’d just read a review of these a few days before — I was thinking about buying my first pair of spikes for my indoor track training, and I was curious to see what the equivalent of the Vaporfly was (you know, something ridiculously fast and ridiculously overpriced). What I came up with was the Victory Elite 2s, which have a carbon fibre plate and cost in excess of $250 CDN.

Well, the ones in the Outlet Store didn’t cost $250. They were a totally reasonably-sounding $79. I texted my club mate Jay to make sure these were good spikes and this was a good price. He replied that they were, and it was, and asked me to pick him up a pair as well.

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Vaporfly Time Trial

On Saturday, I ran the Spring Run Off 8K in a time that struck me as surprisingly fast. I took it relatively easy until the last 2km, but still finished with an average pace of 3:25/km, on a very hilly course, which is faster than I ran similar cross-country races in the fall. So either I’m fitter than I was in the fall, or I was just having a good day, or… it was the shoes.

Because, yes, I was wearing Nike Vaporfly 4%s.

I really debated whether I wanted to spend $330 on a pair of shoes. For a while, the scarcity of the mythical Vaporflies (can I pluralize you like that?) took care of the problem — I couldn’t find any, and if I was undecided about paying $330 in store, I was definitely not going to pay $500 or more on eBay.

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