Coming from a long background in biking there's no denying I have a tendency to be a bit of a gear geek. Both mountain and road biking are steeped in a culture where equipment is of pretty major importance so the initial culture shock of not really having much to buy has been a bit strange to say the least. As such, trying to decide which running shoes to buy has been a bit of a minefield. Allied to general lack of gear geekery in the running world is an aversion I seem to have to spending big money on a pair of trainers, I'm very aware of the hypocrisy of having bikes that cost thousands of pounds and spending large amounts on technical bike clothing but being unwilling to drop a hundred pounds on a pair of running shoes, which, after all are pretty essential to the running process.
Running being a simple thing you'd at least think that once i'd accepted the necessity of a purchase, making my choice wouldn't be that difficult. Wrong! To me at least, there's a bewildering amount of choice and contradictory advice to be had from all directions. Surely, the massive international shoe companies must know what they're doing and there must surely be a tangible benefit to all the research they carry out. Not so simple it seems, Firstly good objective reviews are not easy to find (and perhaps not easy to do) and secondly there's loads of stuff flying round the internet and the running world warning of the dangers of overdeveloped footwear and the injuries it can unwittingly cause. Arghhh!!
Because I am a bit of a sad hippy the whole barefoot running thing does really appeal to me but i'm sensible enough to see that switching to barefoot just prior to a 30 miler would be a stupid idea. I do still like the idea though and will come back to it at some point in the next couple of months. So that left me with a few options.
* Stick with what's working ok now and keep using my cheapo New Balance trail hybrid shoes.
* Cough up for a significantly better pair of New Balance's on the basis that I know i like the ones i already have.
* Make the switch to another mainstream brand. Seeing what i could find that looks like a bargain.
* Buy specific use trail shoes from a company I know nothing about, using decision criteria I don't properly understand.
Of these options, 2 were quickly discounted. My current shoes are on their last legs and trying to last them beyond the 30 miler is just not sensible. They've probably not done more than 200 miles at the moment but the soles have started to feel noticeably soft lately when running over rocks.
Buying a bargain from a mainstream brand was also quickly discarded. If i'm spending a reasonable amount of money I want at least some sort of purchase excitement and the idea just wasn't doing it for me.
2 options to go then. So I dragged Archie, Lis' and her kids to try some on at a local large outdoors store which to be fair they took in good grace. Archie was more help than i'd have liked, he was obviously a little anxious so devided that the place he'd most like to be was on my lap. Well, apart from when he gave himself a seizure trying to jump up on the artifical grass that wasn't stuck down. Anyway, that's off track, sorry.
A better New Balance seemed pretty sensible. They felt pretty good, were reduced by £15 and seemed to do what i need. I couldn't deny to myself though that they justweren't getting me excited. Also, i convinced myself (and probably correctly) that there's no guarantee that New Balance use the same foot cast throughout their range and just because my current shoes work for me doesn't mean another set will.
So, on to the more exciting options, the Inov8's looked good. Again though, the choice was too wide and i didn't know which ones suited me best. The pair i could instantly discount were the lightweight ones that Sean has, there's no fun in buying something after somebody else already has it, sad but true. The rest seemed a little heavy and again, weren't really doing it for me.
It then dawned on me that I'd probably already decided what to buy. I'd seen a development blog post for Salomon Speedcross and realised my heart was already set on them. I tried on two sets, a 10 and a 10.5 but was obviously too much of an idiot to tell the difference in size. There seemed to be a small amount of heel lift on my bigger foot but logic was out of the window now and i wanted a pair. But they didn't have the right colour! I'd be damned if i was spending £90 on shoes that were the wrong colour. Logic said that the colour made no difference and that having the chance to wear them in adequately was much more important but by now i was full on in stupid mode. So after two and a half hours out of the house I left empty handed. :o(
Now you'd probably have thought my stupidity would end there? Nah, fraid not. Turns out that i could get last years Speed Cross for 75% of the price of this years. Bargain...Not. Nope, they needed to be this years because the blog I'd read gave some vague reasons why this years were better and besides they had to be like the menatl image i now had. I.AM.SO.GULLIBLE.
So the moral of all this rambling is, if you're a shoe company your development blog could be more important than all of the actual worthwhile development and marketing effort you involove yourself in. Well it would be if the world was full of more idiots like me anyway.
Hopefully, I'll tell you how awesome they are over the next few weeks and then won't feel quite such a doofus.
^^ The offending blog. ^^
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