I’ve been lucky over the years with running shoes and have had very few shoe problems. I found my brand many years ago and stuck to it. I believe in “if it works, why change it?” It seems to me that certain shoes work better for certain feet and running styles. Some just don’t work at all and over the years this hasn’t change much. However, for some unknown reason, shoe manufacturers often change a fantastic shoe from one year to the next into a very bad shoe. For some reason the model from one year to the next never stays exactly the same, even if the current model is absolutely perfect.
This has happened to me a few times and it really irritates me. Why change a good thing? In the past I’ve tried different models or brands when this happens. If possible I stay with the same brand and go for a different model, but I’ve never been able to change brands successfully. By the way, I run with Nike Pegasus. Years back I noticed Bruce Fordyce running with shoes that had the toes cut open. He obviously wasn’t paying for his shoes like us normal runners, but this got me thinking. Why not stay with my favorite shoe and just cut away the area that bothers me. This obviously only applies if the problem is something that can be removed physically.
I tried this with an older pair of Nikes years ago and cut away a piece of the upper sole that was giving me blisters. The results were great! I now had my perfect shoe…my favorite without any problem areas. Luckily this doesn’t happen very often, but the current models of my favorite shoes have a black “support structure thingy” between the actual sole and the upper part of the shoe. With my style of running I find that after some time (about 500km), the inner sole gets lower and the black thingy presses against my foot and leave me with blisters.
So, after careful consideration, I decided to cut the thingy off. I’ve done this on the oldest pair I currently run in, but will most probably do the same with my newer pair. The shoes are now great and I wonder what the black thingy actually does. Older models didn’t have this and were fine. Well, I suppose they had some reason for introducing it, but for now, I’m cutting. So my shoe has gone from this…
to this…
very similar to the older models without a black thingy.
1 comment:
This reminds me of my high school friend, Mike. His inline skates were hurting the insides of his feet so he like sawed out the whole inner middle part of the skate so there was this giant gaping hole. He said it made a world of difference.
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