Comments

  • Multi-studs...interesting
  • Certainly is interesting.  Difficult to imagine those loops on the sole standing up to wear and tear, though.  One would imagine they'd compress and lose spring-back more quickly than the traditional foam used in most running shoes.
  • my local shop has some in for test - I had a look and feel of them recently. general feeling is they are a gimmick and don't offer much over standard shoes, although they are very light as much of a standard sole material has been removed.

    the main negative has been the noise they make - when the rubber loops compress and uncompress, they momentarily stick together and make an unsticking noise as they separate which has driven some of the testers nuts!

    methinks the jury is out at the mo although they are planning to sell the brand and see how it goes.
  • KeirKeir ✭✭✭
    Anything new and inventive is good. However I won't be buying a pair (nor the new Reebok ones) until I hear from many others runners first.
  • More gimmicks. Every manufacturer looks for an 'angle' to seperate them from the rest.

    I haven't ried them, but to run in spongy shoes sounds like a reccipe for injury to me. We'll see.

  • If you read Gordon Pirie's manual (free via Google - 'running fast and injury free'), just like the barefoot proponents decades later, he theorises that cushioned shoes lead to more injuries (there are numerous studies that suggest this btw) because they prevent the foot from building up muscle. The POSE running community also believe this. Pirie suggests that the great African runners move so gracefully because they learned to run barefoot as children and developed foot strength. Bikila's legendary 2.15 marathon (50 yrs ago this yr) wasn't run BF because he chose to, it was because Puma turned up with the wrong shoes...he wasn't going to let this get in the way of his Olympic chances, so ran sans footwear. He did this partly over cobble stones... I dread cobbles in modern shoes - and can only imagine how strong his feet must've been and how good his technique was.

    Anyway, please excuse my waffling. I haven't grown up running barefoot so don't necessarily practice what I preach. It is worth watching the Africans though - they really do have grace in movement, and it's no coincidence that they start out in bare feet. 

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