Shoes and bike kit

So, what have i learned about shoes in the last year?  Coming from more than a decade where biking was my main interest i was always going to be interested in the equipment side of running.

The biking world is pretty obsessed with kit.  You only have to look at any of the huge number of bike sites online to get a feeling for just how kit dependent biking is.  Looked at from outside it seems kind of strange the levels of expense and obsessiveness riders will justify to save a pound of weight.  This from the same riders that have nowhere near exhausted the self generated skill or body improvements that would produce much larger returns that any amount of expensive tinkering.  

The counter argument to this is that our whole economy is based on smoke and mirrors anyway so why not buy nice things that we like?  How many of us really buy only the things we need?  I am after all writing this on a new iPad when i had a perfectly good first generation model.  The people buying those nice bike parts are spending their disposable income in a way that allows them to feel good, and in the great scheme of things in a way that is pretty healthy.  Is that really so wrong?  After a year away from the bike and after having the opportunity to view this behaviour from afar, one of the first things i did after picking up a rigid singlespeed was to replace the stem and seatpost.  :-S

So, onto shoes.  Over the next few weeks i intend to offer my thoughts on some of the shoes i've tried.  I'm not going to pretend that my opinion is going to be relevant to whether a shoe is right for anybody else.  I think i've come to realise that in terms of shoe choice, much more important than reviews of individual models, is an understanding of what type of shoes work for you.  

I've bought at least three pairs of shoes that in hindsight were mistakes.  All three were fantastically reviewed, and indeed, i still really like two of the three pairs concerned but i just don't get anything like an adequate amount of use out of them.  I now know i ended up buying them out of the desire to follow what i thought i needed at the time.

First up was the Adidas Adizero Boston 2.  Straight after finishing my first ultra and having decided i really enjoyed this runnning malarkey i thought i'd better get some road shoes.  With some biking hangover i figured that lighter was better and spent some time researching well reviewed bargains on the internet.  When they arrived they ticked all the boxes, boy were they light...and bright!  Within a fortnight though it was obvious that they were both too narrow and too firm for me.  £50 lesson number one learned, my feet are quite wide in the forefoot and i need them to not feel cramped.

It wouldn't be fair to call either of the other two pairs of shoes a mistake but that doesn't mean they don't offer valuable lessons.  

At around the same time as the Adidas i picked up some Inov8 baregrip zero drop, minimal, off road shoes.  Again, these are far too narrow for my feet, one of the perils of buying shoes online.  I still got some use out of them last winter doing speed and form work on local playing fields but i'm kidding myself if i trying to justify an £80 outlay for 20 miles in 9 months.  

Finally i picked up a pair of Nike Free 3.0's.  A friend had great experiences with these and managed to put over 300 miles on a pair and i couldn't help myself being interested.  Whilst nowhere near as bad a decision as the Adidas or the Baregrips, nevertheless they haven't represented good value.  I find the Frees completely comfortable for wearing in general life but ouch do my feet hurt if i run more than 3 or 4 miles in them.  The problem with this is that i only ever run less than that distance if i'm doing speed work of some kind yet the very flexible soles of the Frees mean that i'm mega slow in them.  As such they have been relegated to being a very comfortable, very good looking, very smelly pair of casual shoes.  Bugger.

So have i learned my lesson.  Sort of.  I'm on my third pair of Kinvaras now which shows that my urge to try shiny new things is at least under control and for trail stuff i've recently bought my second pair of NB110's as they offer a great fit and fantastic value for money.  But...  The new Inov 8 Trailrocs look rather fantastic don't they?