Vitruvian Shoes

Triathlon Forum
1

At the Mooseman Tri in NH this past weekend (6/6/2005) I rolled around in my Peaceful Tribe apparel trying to find kindred spirits. Ran into a couple of other ST’ers, but no one else in gear. One particularly neat dude was the founder of Vitruvian Running shoes (whose name I’ve forgotten courtesy of post race fatigue). Very cool dude. I told him I liked his message and said I hoped they’d come out with a racing flat sometime soon. My own current shoe du jour is the Nike Zoom Streak XC, but it is rather spendy at like $95. Anyway, I passed along my shoe preferences to Mr. Vitruvian (for lack of a better name) who said he reads here a lot and that several ST’ers are Vitruvian wearers. Anyways. he really values the feedback he gets from athletes, so just curious if anyone else has met him and spoke with him about racing flats? I’m planning on emailing him with some of my own thoughts (shoemaker@vitruvianrunning.com) and thought maybe some other ST’ers might do the same. Seems like he really listens…

I have no affiliation with Vitruvian at all, I just sense that this guy is a genuine individual trying to make good shoes for a fair price, and if I can help someone like that, even in a small way, I’d like to try…

Maybe we will have the Vitruvian Slowtwitch shoe… Nice complement to the Saucony Fasttwitch, IMO…

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Never met the guy, but I’ve got a pair of his shoes. They’re nice, comfortable, if somewhat basic (and that’s not meant as a derogatory comment). I like em, but generally use them for my short sub-50 minute runs. For longer stuff, I still wear my cushioned Mizunos.

3

His name is Chuck LaBonte. I’ve spoken with him on two occasions to get my shoe order right and then to thank him. I think it would be pretty easy to make a nice racer as the Proportion IIs I have are nearly light enough and have the slipper fit of a racing flat. But until the demand is there to make it profitable for him I doubt we’ll see it soon.