 As you can probably imagine, by the way, I just got done with my run today. As you can probably imagine, reviewing shoes with a five-year-old and a three-year-old is a little difficult. However, my children, my boys, they are desperate to watch me open this package. I think they think it's for them. It's for Papa. Remember, Cyber Monday? Go check it out. I purchased, finally, the Solomon Alpine's. Okay. No. You guys ready to go? Oh. Okay, you guys. That's an antler. This is from Blake. Thank you, Blake. All right, guys. Now, I'm gonna give you my initial impressions here in about two minutes, but first, we're gonna open it with my boys. Huh? By the way, backcountrythankyou.com. Okay, there's one. You get one, too. Maybe, maybe. Open that up. Cool. You guys are inside. Thank you, boys, for helping me open up the boxes. Appreciate that. They are a little wild at times, and so I cannot really review the shoes with them in the area, so they're inside now. We're good to go. All right. I've already reviewed one pair of Solomon's. This past summer, by the way, I live in Colorado, so I run in the mountains a ton. 14ers, I run 14ers all the time. Go check out the Speed Cross initial impressions up there. Here's another pair. Can't wait to use these again. Amazing. Got a great deal on Cyber Monday. Great deal. That's why I was able to get two pairs of Solomon shoes. Go check out that vlog. All right. So, basically, I am excited for 2018 racing, but I would like to do some racing in the spring. So in April, May of 2018, I don't know if those races will be, most likely those races will be outside of Colorado, because in Colorado, if you obviously, we get snow here. In fact, we can get snow here as late as June in Colorado. Hence the reason why I decided to get this S-Lab XA Alpine shoe. Now, initial impression. I expected the lugs on the bottom to be a little bigger, a little more depth to the lug. Compared to the Speed Cross, the Speed Cross lug is much deeper, much taller than on these Alpine. So I'm a little surprised by that, but that's okay. The main reason I got this shoe is to go running in the snow. Makes sense? In the slush. So, this upper here zips up and then zips down and you have your shoe right there on the inside. See, it reveals the shoe. Boom, but you have this like glove on the outside to protect your foot when you're running in the snow. The snow is coming, even though it's 60 degrees out and it's almost, tomorrow is December 1st, the snow is definitely gonna be coming. So I'm excited to be able to run in the mud, in the slush and in the snow this winter in order to get ready for races in 2018. So the upper, it looks awesome. It looks like it's well built. Waterproof, at least on the bottom section here, on the bottom, up here, it's a little more of a mesh. So, definitely not fully waterproof, but we'll keep most of the, you know, if you go wading through a river, you're gonna get wet. But if you're running through slush and snow, you're gonna stay pretty dry. I like how it really wraps nice and tight around your ankle there. For the inside, I'm very excited about this lacing system, this guy right there. You just pull it to get a nice, tight fit. And that is one of the reasons I love Solomon. In high school, I ran in ASICS in college at the University of Colorado. I raced and ran in Nike because that's who CU is sponsored by. Since college, post college, I've been running in Hokas to help stay healthy because I had a lot of stress fractures in college. I wanted a little more cushion to my shoe. But Hokas, I love them. However, they just don't hold and grip and hug your foot like a Solomon. So when you're running in the mountains, especially up steep mountains, like 14ers in Colorado, like I did this past summer, you're on your toes and you really, if you have any slip in your heel, no good. So here is the climbing zone for the Solomon, right here on the forefoot. And that combined with the lacing system, this lacing system that just hugs your foot, like it's just like a bear hug on your foot. But overall, I'm very excited. My initial impressions are good. They are basically what I expected to arrive in the mail. I expected the lugs to be just a little more depth to them, but that's okay. We'll see how they perform. I'll give you a full review after I've taken them to the mountains a little bit. So thank you for stopping by. This is not a review channel on YouTube. This is not a running channel on YouTube. There's plenty of people out there doing that. This is, you know, I do a daily vlog. But if you would like more running videos that I have filmed, about 20 of them, including some gear reviews, go check out that playlist. Excuse me, go check out that playlist up right here in corner. I think you'll enjoy it. And thanks for stopping by. All right, continue with life.