I’ve been around. And around. And around. I’ve seen fads come, fads go. From DMSO to the pose method and everything in between. It never ceases to amaze me at how gullible people are when it comes to slick advertising. “Run your fastest 5K on only 20 miles a week!” Or worse yet, the “lemming” effect. Dangerous paradigm that, if it works for so and so it must be good for me too!
Oh, but its the latest and greatest and all the cool kids are doing/wearing/taking/using this!
If anything, 35 years in the sport makes me over qualified to make judgement calls on the state of running. And my observations might upset the applecart, or the bandwagon, but I call em as I see em.
It was hard enough for me to shill Newtons. I never bought the notion that a shoe can actually change your natural foot strike. You are either a mid foot striker or you aren’t, shoes don’t make a damn bit of difference. What I do believe is that they might be a good shoe if you are gifted with excellent running form. Which I have and they still didn’t do a thing for me. Alas.
If you want to learn to run differently than what the Good Mother gave you, start out by taking your shoes off. Pretty simple.
And now I’m seeing “Hoka one one” as the latest rage in trail running. You’ve got to be kidding me. “Oh, but you should have been at xxx trail race, all the fast kids were wearing them.” Right. And Meb won the USA Olympic Marathon Trials wearing Skechers. Its the runner, not the shoes. Pretty simple.
Thanks to my buddy Kyle Clouston for pointing out the link I posted yesterday was for the 2012 Run For The Bridges. I’m not able to find the 2013 official results yet but Kyle reports winning his race by 5 minutes. Nice job Kyle.
Hoka. Joka. Maybe if the platform was only 6″ higher, I could find a Real use for them.
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