As I was rocking my 6-week old son to sleep earlier tonight, I was thumbing through an Eastbay catalog, and happened to notice that they were advertising a shoe called the Nike Sneakerboat II. Nike has apparently released a sequel to the original Sneakerboat, and it is now available through several on-line retailers (see links below)
Adidas Superstar Mujer . I have no idea how this shoe might perform as a minimalist running shoe, but I was tempted enough by its apparently flat, minimally cushioned sole (see picture above), it’s reasonably attractive design (it even has a flywire-like pattern similar to Nike running shoes), and its low price ($40-45.00 depending on the store) that I ordered a pair to try out. The shoe is also
Adidas Superstar Femme apparently environmentally friendly (which is a big plus in my book), being made out of recycled
Nike Air Max Classic BW Mens materials as indicated in the following description from the Eastbay product page:“Whether you’re passionate about the environment or just want a comfy casual shoe to wear on the beach, the boat and beyond — look no further. The Nike Sneakerboat II is made with recycled materials, including the recycled-content mesh and neoprene upper and the recycled foam sockliner.
Nike Air VaporMax Donne It also has an OS44 sticky rubber sole with Regrind? for great traction on wet surfaces. Wear it for the earth, wear it for the boat — or wear it for a cool summer style!“It’s clear from the above description that Nike is not marketing this as a minimalist running shoe (maybe they should – we’ll see), but the Vibram Fivefingers also began their life as a water sports
Nike Air Max 95 Femme>shoe, so who knows, maybe these will do the trick. Given that these are half the price of most
Adidas Superstar Femme Vibrams, and a third of the price of shoes like the remarkably expensive Terra Plana EVO ($160.00 for a minimalist shoe???), it would be great if they represented another alternative to what’s currently out there for minimalist runners. Check back here in a few weeks and I should hopefully have a preliminary review posted (if I don’t, it’s likely because my wife strangled
Nike Air Max 95 Femme me for bringing yet another pair of shoes into the house!). In the meantime, if you just can’t wait to try them yourself,The recent series of posts that I wrote criticizing the new Nike Free Run+ running shoe (if interested, you can start with this one) have generated a lot of traffic to this blog, and have prompted a few commenters to criticize me for “attacking” a
Nike Air Max 90 Femme shoe that I have never worn. My response to these comments has been consistent – I wasn’t attacking
Nike Air Max TN Donne the shoe per se, I was attacking the fact that it was being marketed by Nike+ as promoting a “more natural, barefoot-like stride” (quote taken directly from Nike Free Run+ product page). Words matter, and the term “barefoot” has a very clear meaning in both common usage (nothing at all covering your foot) and when used to scientifically describe a running gait.
www.tobiasstiftung.de Regarding the latter, he is a direct quote from Daniel Lieberman and colleagues’ paper, runners who grew up barefoot or switched to barefoot running … most often used FFS (forefoot strike) landings followed by heel contact (toe-heel-toe running) in both barefoot and shod conditions. MFS (midfoot strike) landings were sometimes used in barefoot conditions…and shod
www.aquarillon.fr conditions…but RFS (rearfoot strike) landings were infrequent during barefoot running in both groups.So it seems that from Lieberman’s paper’s we have a pretty good definition of at least one major component of the “barefoot running gait” (and his is just one example, for another see this paper by De Wit at al., 2000) – barefoot running is characterized by a forefoot or midfoot strike, so any shoe that purports to simulate a “barefoot-like” stride should be designed to
Nike Air Max Classic BW Damen facilitate this type of footstrike.
