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the running life
I picked up a new pair of runners last weekend, sticking with what the nice adidas girl told me and thus I'm now the owner of a pair of adidas Supernova Control 10, er, running shoes. I'd actually spent a little time looking online beforehand, and while Nike also do a motion control shoe (what us over-pronaters need, apparently), Lifestyle Sports didn't stock any of them, plus I had a 10% discount voucher for the adidas kit courtesy of my little foot test.
The most obvious difference - to me - is that these have a very, very solid arch support. This currently has the effect of no longer chafing the rear side of the ball of my foot, like my old sneaks do: instead, it chafes a point slightly further back, where my arches should, well, arch if I didn't have flat feet. Obviously I will need to work on this before the half-marathon next month, or take up the advice of various other people and pre-apply blister medication, giant woolly socks, and run on my knuckles. All kidding aside, I'm expecting this to become less of a problem once I do a few distance training runs; my old sneaks used give me blisters on short runs until I'd either gotten my feet used to them or gotten them used to my feet.
The second thing these shoes have is something that adidas call Formotion™ which, as best I can gather, means that the heel cushion is more-or-less built like independant suspension and flexes to accomodate the way in which your heel hits the ground without quite so much regard to how the rest of your foot arrives. I really noticed this this evening, when I was banging down a concrete pavement and barely noticed the impact. Neat.
So far I've clocked up a five-mile, a gym session, and tonight's 5k on the shoes, and there's a noticable difference (aside from the change in chafe point) in how the shoe feels, but it's a little early to look for other effects. Principally, this should stop me from screwing up my knees on the inside of the joint (not that I'd noticed any tendency for that to occur), but also I'm curious to see whether my calf muscles get a bit more balanced as they're currently more bulked up on the inside than the outside as a result of coping with where the stresses lie when I've been flopping my feet down like a seal. Plus, I've half a mind to take a spin in the old shoes and see if I can match tonight's 5k time to see if these new shoes really are faster than the old ones...
The most obvious difference - to me - is that these have a very, very solid arch support. This currently has the effect of no longer chafing the rear side of the ball of my foot, like my old sneaks do: instead, it chafes a point slightly further back, where my arches should, well, arch if I didn't have flat feet. Obviously I will need to work on this before the half-marathon next month, or take up the advice of various other people and pre-apply blister medication, giant woolly socks, and run on my knuckles. All kidding aside, I'm expecting this to become less of a problem once I do a few distance training runs; my old sneaks used give me blisters on short runs until I'd either gotten my feet used to them or gotten them used to my feet.
The second thing these shoes have is something that adidas call Formotion™ which, as best I can gather, means that the heel cushion is more-or-less built like independant suspension and flexes to accomodate the way in which your heel hits the ground without quite so much regard to how the rest of your foot arrives. I really noticed this this evening, when I was banging down a concrete pavement and barely noticed the impact. Neat.
So far I've clocked up a five-mile, a gym session, and tonight's 5k on the shoes, and there's a noticable difference (aside from the change in chafe point) in how the shoe feels, but it's a little early to look for other effects. Principally, this should stop me from screwing up my knees on the inside of the joint (not that I'd noticed any tendency for that to occur), but also I'm curious to see whether my calf muscles get a bit more balanced as they're currently more bulked up on the inside than the outside as a result of coping with where the stresses lie when I've been flopping my feet down like a seal. Plus, I've half a mind to take a spin in the old shoes and see if I can match tonight's 5k time to see if these new shoes really are faster than the old ones...
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For the record, I did the adidas one; it consists of a footplate which you run over a couple of times in order to capture the placement of the left and right feet. It's tricky enough as you have to strike the pad while not trying to alter your gait in order to strike the pad. You then get shown various models of your footstrike pattern (this is mainly just nerd porn; they could simply explain that you over or under pronate and leave it at that) and they recommend either motion-control or support depending on the way in which You're Doing It Wrong.
nike's setup involves running on a treadmill with a camera focussed on your feet. It strikes (hah!) me as being easier to capture your natural gait that way, although I'm not sure how good a determination of pronation the resulting video cap is.
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Bring your old running shoes and they'll look at the wear patterns. They'll also look at your feet (high arches usually supinate, flat feet usually pronate) and my store did the treadmill plus video thing.
By the way, the video thing is easy to understand: pronation means rolling your foot to the outside during your stride, supination means rolling it to the inside. (If your shoes show wear on the bottom under your big toe and under your heel to the outside, you pronate.) There are also different degrees of pronation. Stability shoes (what I have been directed to) are for mild pronation, motion control for greater pronation.
I've never had blister problems.
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My doctor when I was a kid explained the importance of wearing supportive shoes to prevent or alleviate the symptoms.