it is so very funny and prescient that you ask this question, because i had a footwear editorial meeting just yesterday. the point of the thread up today is to see precisely which hoka people are wearing. and then which saucony, etc. (tho we pretty much already know), and to them regroup shoes away from "neutral", "stability", "motion control" and into the categories that have organically formed through the user experience.

obviously there's a clifton/clayton user base and my guess is that this corresponds to the kinvara user base. and you certainly are right that skechers makes shoes that fit right in here.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

A buddy owns a running store and suggested the Skechers to me when the Cliftons didn't work. I was hesitant at first b/c, come on, they are Skechers... I'm sold at this point. Quality shoe at a decent price. I spent last year in the Forza and liked them...trying to transition to a more neutral shoe this year and have maybe 50 miles on a pair of Go Run 4's and love them. So damn light and comfortable.

I loved my sketches go run, 2nd and 3rd generations. Don't love the newer ones. I am down to my last pair of 3's and save them for races. I found them to be interchangeable with my cliftons (my shoe for long slow days and HM's). I also don't care for any of the 2nd generation and beyond cliftons. Sadly I am no longer able to find any cliftons.

As a side rant: I swear all new shoe companies go to market with a shoe that solves a problem. E.g. Wide toe box. They have moderate success then get pressured to grow sales then shrink the toe box to allow for greater adoption of their product. They then lose the base that got them started. I gave sketchers a pass at first because they were taking costs down and I felt they were experimenting and hoped they would go back to the original fit...

There really isn't a Clfiton equivalent in the Skechers Performance lineup. There are shoes that are as responsive/cushioned, but they're not as light. There are shoes that are fast, but don't feel like the Clifton. The Clifton is really unique for what it is, I just wish it would quit gaining an oz here or there with every revision and getting away from what it originally was. I've run in quite a few Skecher Performance shoes, but they aren't the Clifton.

That said - I can't wait for the Zealot 3 to hit the market this summer. It'll be lighter than the Clifton, slightly softer with an Everun topsole, have the wider fit of the v1 Zealot, with a knit upper. By all accounts it will be a Clifton killer, and I'm ready to jump back to Sauc when it hits provided they don't screw it up beyond the sample I saw this winter.

The most analogous shoe is the probably GoRun Ultra Road or whatever it's called now. I'm a big Hoka person, but I've been doing a lot of road racing (5k-10k) in the GoMeb Speeds and running some of my best times with them. Yeah, they're Skechers, but they're not really that bad.

I do all my training runs in Stinsens, both trail and road. They are too slow getting into for the sprint and olympic races that I do. I to all my races, including road running in Go Run 2 or 3's, I can't remember. They are great for racing but there is really nothing to them; low cut, no heal counter at all and no outsole; you run on the cushioning.

They would never hold up to running every day, but for races they feel so goooood!

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''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law