Newton Running Shoes

I keep thinking about getting a pair of these. I already said I wanted them in my other post, but now I'm sort of reconsidering.

Again, these shoes pretty much encourage a footfore footstrike. I've never been a forefoot running, I'd like to think I've split my years halfway has a heelstriker and halfway as a midsole runner. In any case, the biggest concern for me is that to run in Newton Running Shoes you need to be trying to switch to a forefoot or at least midsole plant. As their site says:


While our shoes incorporate heel technology, the technology is primarily a recovery or rebound platform for mid-foot striking. If you are a heel striker and are not working on changing your form to mid-foot/fore-foot striking, the Newton is not the right shoe for you.

Basically, if you're already a forefoot striker, then this is the shoe for you. They'll last you longer than if you aren't, and the effect will be better. If you're a heelstriker, well, you better be trying to change your footstrike.

Again, this reminds me a lot of what I've read about POSE. It seems that they're advertising reduction of injury by lessening stress on the knees, but is it really the shoes? The shoes, supposedly, force you to relearn running, I guess, but I would say that mostly the company wants everyone to switch to a forefoot plant, similar to POSE. I remember reading specifically, however, that runners with histories of calf and achilles injuries who are currently heel strikers should probably not try POSE because it increases the load on the calves and achilles (big surprise, the stress has to go somewhere).

In any case, none of us are really forefoot strikers except Ian. I think Matt does it a little too. I think Mark is more of a midsole/heel kinda guy. A bunch of us are still mostly heelstrikers, or somewhere in midsole-heel land.

This isn't to say you could never run in the Newtons without switching to a forefoot plant, but it basically means that you will wear down the sole so fast that you will go through many, many pairs of these shoes very quickly. At $175 a pair, you'd be dropping money like diarrhea you've been holding in for two hours.

Also 175 bucks is ridiculous. However, the 175 dollars doesn't just come with the shoes, it comes with your own pair of Newton Socks, a hot bag, and some extra laces! Well worth the extra 70-90 dollars you'll spend instead of going for other lightweight trainers!

So really, the only one of us that could really ever need this shoe is Ian. But he's a poor graduate student, so he shouldn't even be thinking about it.