The Nike folks paid our club a visit last night to show off their new show. For those that aren’t familiar, they have released a shoe that is supposed to replicate barefoot running. Alleged benefits include minimising healstrike and strengthening the foot. Anyone had any experience with this shoe?
I run in them once a week - mostly drills. They are pretty sweet.
Look here for the best review I have seen.
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=582125&thread=554219
I know quite a few others who do all their running in them, including the great Benji Durden.
I think they are one of the best shoes made right now but I would take what Nike has to say about it with a grain of salt. This is one of the few time Nike has messed up the marketing of a product. There are a lot of people out there working for Nike selling this shoe in the wrong way. The fact that you say that they minimise heel strike says to me that the person doing the clinic was a bit off base with the cancept of barefoot running.
they are one of the best shoes on the market and would recomend them to just about anyone. They are nice and light and slip on easy so they will make a GREAT tri shoe, IM even better.
If you really want to see the truth about it call your local running store and ask if they have the disk that came with it for retailers. That will give you a great feel for the real design of the shoe. If they dont have it, call my friend Matt at Runner Center Temecula, 951-587-8450 and he can burn a copy for you for a small charge to cover shipping in what not, like a couple of bucks. he may just do it for free but I dont what to put words in your mouth. If you are interested in the shoe, it will be worth it to see the disk.
We have over 80 shoes on our “shoe wall” – the shoes we stock for runners. Of those, only five are Nike, and two of them are the mens’ and womens’ Free. On the other hand, we have about 20 shoes on our “style” wall. 10 of those are Nike. (Plus we have the Frees on that wall too because they’re really cool looking.)
I love the Free, and even though I don’t agree with Nike on a lot of topics, I really appreciate what they’re trying to do with the Free. There are a few on this board who run in Frees all the time (hi LaWoof) but for most people, the Free is best used for the purpose it was designed: skill training. That is, the Free is the shoe you should run in when you’re training yourself to run with good form, because it lets you feel exactly how your foot is landing. When you’re doing drills to develop a forefoot landing instead of the more common heel first landing, you need the immediate feedback of knowing exactly what part of your foot touches the ground first. Even lightweight shoes like racing flats spread that feeling out. If you can’t actually run barefoot when doing those drills, the Free is the next best thing.
I do agree with Nike that walking around in the Free will help develop the foot strength that most of us lack. I believe that walking around in the Frees for a week helped me alleviate a case of Plantar Fascitis. (Don’t ask me why, because I can’t really explain it, but it worked.) However, they also contributed to a recurrance of IT band syndrome – I was overpronating in them when I walked. I would have been fine if I was running all the time, but just walking they didn’t give me a stable enough platform. Small doses probably would have worked better.
Lee Silverman
JackRabbit Sports
Park Slope, Brooklyn
I wear orthotics but still get Plantar Fasciatis and shin splints when I do a lot of speed work. Think these would do me some good? Also, do you use your orthotics with them? Sorry, I’m a little uneducated on the concept…
Thanks, Andy
Would need to know what your orthotics are doing for you, but in general no, I would not recommend wearing orthotics in the Free. If you go to your local running store and check them out, you’ll immediately see why. There’s nothing in the Free to support the orthotic, so it can’t do its job, but the rigidity of the orthotic will prevent the Free from doing its job. If you’re going to try Frees, try them without your orthotics.
Lee Silverman
JackRabbit Sports
Park Slope, Brooklyn
tried a pair the other day on a treadmill in a shoe shop. really liked em. i’m always a shoe minimalist to begin with (run IMs in flats), and these feel about as minimal a road shoe as i’ve ever worn. i’ll be buying a pair when they get the blue ones in the shop. sorry, but i just cant do that god-awful neon lime green color… i’ve gone through enough embarassment in my asic gel magics.
lemme guess…my shox are on the style not function wall…
This is a stupid question but do you wear socks when you have these shoes on or do they take away from what your trying to accomplish with them?
Mike
How much money do they cost ? I am 52 would they be for us older guys ? I am a midfood runner who wants to run for the rest of life .
Dirtball
Happy Thanksgiving
unless it is colder than minus 15, socks have no function even in Ironmans. they just get damp and wet and give you blisters. Go sock free or go home:-)
Funny, and I wish it were always true with all shoes. Some shoes just “rub” my feet the wrong way I’m afraid.
www.roadrunnersports.com has some reviews of the Free shoe. No seems to be dissatisfied with them so far.
But, RRS doesn’t have any large sizes. Should we assume these shoes aren’t for bigger runners?
-Robert
unless it is colder than minus 15, socks have no function even in Ironmans. they just get damp and wet and give you blisters. Go sock free or go home:-)
no function? you want the relative movement (and hence abrasion) to be between the shoe and the sock, not between the shoe and the skin. you must have tough feet. i will run a half without socks, but not a full IM
I like the feel of sock free running better. I feel more in tune with the road/trail. Socks are just an additional barrier that remove the feedback that the thousands of nerves have under your feet with the ground. As for relative motion, I like using the insoles that are a bit more “grippy” like in most adidas shoes and the various Nike trail shoes. I find the insoles that Saucony provides to be crappy and I do slide more with these insoles. For all of the above reasons, I plan to buy some Nike Frees. I like shoes that just bend with your foot with zero support.
so the nike free is ok for racing it seems (5-10k)…why does nike discourage it’s use for anything other than training
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unless it is colder than minus 15, socks have no function even in Ironmans. they just get damp and wet and give you blisters. Go sock free or go home:-)
Tell that to the guy that was hit by a motorcycle in Hawaii and walked his bike in. Do you think he would have completed it without socks?
“I like the feel of sock free running better.”
and after awhile, your shoes smell great!
unless it is colder than minus 15, socks have no function even in Ironmans. they just get damp and wet and give you blisters. Go sock free or go home:-)
There was a time I thought shoes were a device of the devil, and socks were a device of little girls. I hate the feeling of numbness socks add to the propulsion experience, be it cycling, walking, running, skipping, frolicking in the heather with a sweet swedish goddess, whatever. Things have changed slightly. Having worn the Adidas Cubato sockless for about 4 years I can now say that socks definitely have a function, and it’s got nothing to do with blisters. They keep the grime/dirt that accumulates in the soles of shoes from turning into sludge by mixing with your foot’s sweat. Running in sludge shoes sucks, it’s way worse than running with socks.
i wear black socks for heather frolicking…
it also gets a tad nippy in the northern climes in the winter, and running/riding in socks can make a difference.
i was thinking about that. its really probably a dilemma for nike. they cant really market them to the general public as anything other then training shoe anymore than i would advise my girlfriend (biggest heel striker you ever met) to run long in flats. think of all the poor bastards limping around complaining about how those shoes ruined their legs, etc.
they’re sort of a victim of the monster they’ve created. people have become so dependent on big puffy heels (and their form has adjusted accordingly), so they really can’t market em to those people coming from, say, a nike pegasus.
nor can they say that the typical running shoe is bad, and has bred a whole generation of improper form, as they themselves are the biggest culprits. it’d be admitting culpability.
they’re really kind of stuck.