Never Walk.
A story about running shoes…
I suffer from a light addiction to running shoes. I seem to be always on the lookout for the perfect running shoe (for me) - which led me to an interesting journey through shoeland:
As most runners, when I started running (after a longer hiatus) I went to my local running shop, hopped on the treadmill, was told that I’m a mild overpronator and that I should buy a pair of structured running shoes to correct this “problem”. While easing myself back into running, I spent a year in the pair of Asics Gel Kayano I bought that day in the shop. I realized that something was wrong when I ran my first Half-Marathon race in them and lost two toenails as a result of this. Turned out that my feet have a tendency to swell up a bit while running longer distances and the friendly guy in the shoe shop sold me a pair of shoes which were simply too small.
Shaped by this experience I started experimenting with running shoes. Believing the good advice magazines like Runners World bestow upon the world, I picked up more structured shoes such as Sauconys ProGrid Omni which promised a “plush ride” and the proper correction of my problems. Somehow none of these shoes worked for me - though they feel plush for the first couple of miles of my runs, they all start to hurt and feel weird after 10 or more miles. Further their relatively high weigh just felt wrong on my runs.
After reading “Born to Run” and a short detour into barefoot running land (which not only led to massive blisters while running in Vibram FiveFingers and a rather severe achilles tendon injury), I decided to apply a bit more rigor to my shoe experimentation: Starting out with my current selection of shoes (consisting of a pair of Saucony ProGrid Omni, Nike LunarFly, Newton Gravitas, Newton Distancia, New Balance 905, Adidas AdiZero Mana and a pair of Brooks Mach 12 trailrunning shoes), I spent about a week of training in each and diligently made notes about performance, injuries (or better: the niggling start of potential injuries), fit and overall feel.
To make a long story short (and my personal findings seem to be pretty much in line with the recent study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine) — The less tech I seem to have in my shoes the better I run, the better I feel and the less prone am I to injuries. Overall I feel that any tech in shoes just gets into my way to run natural with a soft mid-/forefoot strike. I pretty much stopped running in anything else than my AdiZero Mana (a decidedly low-tech racing flat) and my Mach 12 for trails - both have rather thin soles, a low heel-to-toe drop and no advanced, fancy technology in the sole.
This might not work for you (and you certainly need to easy your body into it if you’re currently running in a lot of tech in your shoes), but I certainly encourage you to try it out.
Next on my list of shoes to try is Asics Gel DS Racer - another rather low-tech racing flat with a bit more room in the toebox (the Adidas are great but rather narrow). What are your experiences with running shoes?
