Review of the Altra Mont Blanc Boa Trail Running shoes
Fancy lacing system and shiny colors, but is the price worth it?
First impression
Specifications
The Mont Blanc is a well-known series within Altra's line up.
However, this model is called BOA (uppercase) for a reason: it's using a
specific lacing system, which comes from BOA -
typically more used for snowboard shoes.
The principle is simple: instead of the usual laces that you have to manually
and carefully pull, the BOA system comes with 2 "wheels", one located near
the phalanges, the other one located near the ankle.
You just have to push the crown and turn it clockwise, to lace the shoe - and
doing so very granularly (there's a "clic" everytime the lace gets more
tight).
You do the same thing for both crowns, and since each crown controls its own
lace (there are 2 laces in fact), you can in theory have a much better control
on how your shoe fits.
The outsole is made of Vibram's Litebase.
In terms of weight, they are quite light, thanks to the external tissue - which is super thin - more on that later, as that's one of the things I am a bit skeptical about with the Mont Blanc BOA.
Look
I'll be honest: when I ordered them, I really liked their colors, but when I received them and tried them, I really felt like I was wearing Crocs.
My wife is used to seeing me wearing Altra shoes - she calls it "clown's shoes", as the toebox is very large, which makes them look like... well, clown's shoes :)
In the case of the BOA, for some reason it's even more obvious - maybe because of the single, orange color?
Test!
First run
The nice thing with the lacing system is that you can really have the shoe wide open, which makes it a lot easier to put the shoe on:
Using the BOA system is a no brainer, and as I said before, you can finely control how strong you want it to be.
What I found let's say different from my other running/trail shoes, is how thin the external tissue is - it's not uncomfortable, but the feeling is a bit weird.
Blisters! :|
During my first run with the BOA, I used my trail socks (Drymax Maximum Protection Trail) as they're really comfortable and provide a very good protection (see pica below with me wearing those socks).
So I didn't get any issue.
But on another run, I used some regular running socks, and after 30 minutes, I started feeling a pain near my ankle - I initially thought it was some muscle pain, but when I stopped and had a look, it was just... a blister!
Since the socks I was using were a lot thinner, I managed to get a blister as the BOA's external tissue is really thick at this place.
Next runs
Once I had figured out that running with the BOA required specific socks, my next runs were a lot better :)
I tend to use the BOA only for trail training, i.e. when I want to do some
up/down hills on trails - it does not make any sense to use them for training on
road, as they're meant for trails.
Plus also, given their price, I'd rather keep them for training/long trail runs
and trail races :)
Fine tweaking the lacing
One thing I noticed especially during hill repeats, is that I can very easily and quickly tighten the "laces" as my feet move - something that would take a lot more time and would be a lot trickier with regular laces.
Wrap Up
So, are those BOA worth it?
For the moment, I think they're great for "medium" distances, at least for me -
between 30 to 50K. I'll gradually increase the distance, but at the same time I
want to be cautious with the lacing system, as I don't want to get more
blisters.