Staer wrote:
Hmm sounds like an N=1.
I have pretty heavy overpronation and
love running in Nikes, particularly the Pegasus and ZoomFly/4%/Next%.
it is N=1. david asked for
my experience. i'm going to write something that you may take in a way i don't intend, and i probably don't mean this as bad as it might sound (we'll see what it reads like when i write it).
what we had a decade ago was the barefoot era. vibram 5 fingers. what i said then is what i'll say now: that i'd been running for 40 years. now, in the current era, today, i've been running 50 years. i've lived the longitudinal N=1 study. a decade ago i was told what would work for me, if i only gave myself over to it. a lot of barefoot runners didn't make it out whole. their individual N=1 studies didn't prove out the long term efficacy of running without shoes.
today, when i write about nike in the context of shoes that support my own morphology, age, running style, this is what i see. nike's user share among slowtwitchers - for race purposes - doubled within 6mo of the 4%, from half of HOKA's share to equal with HOKA's share. bravo to nike. but for a lot of these folks, let's talk in another decade. yes, nike works for a lot of folks. but for folks like me, will they still be running in nike, or running at all, in a decade?
i am a fast swimmer in the 60-64 AG. but i'm not a fast swimmer. it's just that everyone who could swim dropped out of my AG because... they can no longer run. so i rose in the heirarchy. the main reason, when i talk to people, that they don't do triathlons is that they... can't... run anymore.
i will answer technical questions about the themes and construction imperatives used by brands, whenever those questions are asked (or whenever i just feel the urge to riff without being asked). certainly my views are colored thru my own experience. but they're also colored thru the experience of: i'm still here, still running, after 50 years of hard charging, i'm too big to be still running as i do after 50 years, yet here i am, while a lot of others aren't. i don't mean to lecture anyone. but this is a repeat of the vibram 5 finger thing a decade ago. yes, there are still successful barefoot runners and to them i say: i wish i was you. but excluding these exceptions, writ large, where are all those barefoot experts now?
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman