Shoe Review: Nike Free 3.0

For the last three months I've been debating whether to buy a pair of Nike Free 3.0's. I've enjoyed the Nike Free 5.0 (version 1's) for almost there years now, starting with my bright green pair (now almost completely shredded) and then with a second generation version-one red pair (similar to Mark's and Ian's).

I remember the day I got my first pair in the mail. I tore the box open, put the shoes on and thought "man, these feel like the most comfortable slippers, ever." I wore them around the house for a while, and once track started I started doing track workouts in them. They were great as lightweight trainers, and on the indoor track they gave a really good feel for the turns. As it turned out, the season when I first started wearing my free's was the first season I developed shin splints, a fact I now directly attribute towards the lack of arch support and pronation control in the Nike Free. In any case, I loved the shoes. The following summer I ran plenty of 10 milers in these shoes all feeling very, very fast. The greatest part was that as they wore down, they only seemed to improve in comfort and flexibility.

Consequently, my expectations were high when the UPS driver delivered my pair of Nike Free 3.0's to my door. Could they live up to the Nike Free 5.0? I picked these sheos up, and they were light, very light. They were even lighter than most spikes I have ever worn in my life (6.2oz), and shaved somewhere between two and three ounces off of the 5.0's. From the pictures I immediately noticed a few changes. The bottom looked different. It was composed of smaller pieces, and more of them. While the 5.0's are made mainly from an interesting combination of cloth and elastic material, the 3.0's are made with the traditional mesh found in spikes and lightweight trainers, extended throughout the shoe to give even less support.

I put the shoes on and immediately noticed that these babies couldn't just be slipped on in half of a second. Again, like spikes or racing flats, your foot had to be carefully put into the shoe, and the laces untied and retied again. I stood up and there received a huge shock: ARCH SUPPORT?!!?!?!? What was arch support doing in a shoe that is supposedly less stable than the Nike Free 5.0. I recalled that I no longer wore insoles in my 5.0's, a decision that has lead to regular washings of these shoes to eliminate the foul odors that accumulate in the cloth (seriously, with the insole the smell is probably half as bad and can go a lot longer without being washed). I wonder if the removal of the insole and the continued wear of my 5.0's had brought their scale down to a sub-4.0 scale.

I walked around, jumped around, and flexed my foot and noted another curious quality: as you flex the ball of your foot as during toe-off, the shoe forces your heel and ankle to follow a line that is not parallel to your line of motion. Instead of a straight toe-off, your ankle doesn't follow your toes forward and actually starts to go outwards. I think I noticed this a bit in the 5.0's in the beginning, but never this much.

I stood there in my 3.0's for 10 minutes, evaluating the little bumps and ridges. Arch support, strange forefoot flexion, and then I noticed there even seemed to be a bit of support right under the ball of the foot. The lack of elastic material the back made the heel fit imperfect, and I wondered if this would be a cause of blisters in the future (to be determined...). I was dying to take these babies out for a run but the recent irritation of my peroneal tendon, aggravated by supination of the foot (as in, too much arch support = bad), made the day a biking today, as was the next today.

I woke up this morning with my peroneal tendon feeling better. It never really hurt, just sort of "itched". Again, I thought it would be a biking today, but thirty-three minutes on the rollers had me itching to hit the road. Perhaps against my better judgement, I took these puppies out for a run.

I guess there were a few things that I immediately noticed. Despite there being arch support, there somehow felt as if there wasn't support, just this big wad of hardness pushing against my arch. Perhaps it was the fact that the base of this shoe is much narrower than the 5.0, perhaps taking away a bit of stability. The heel lift was noticeable, as it is in the Nike Free 5.0. In the 5.0, however, the lift becomes almost overwhelming, and it seems to force me to run with a heel strike. Even with the left of the 3.0, however, it seemed much easier to forefoot and midfoot strike. I switched back and forth between every type of footstrike I could find, and they all actually seemed reasonably comfortable.

Almost as soon as it had started, my run was over. A mere fifteen minutes out on the roads (grass seemed to be a bad idea, because it's uneven and I didn't want to roll an ankle). The overall feeling from this shoe is that it's good, and will improve with wear and solid miles to break it in. However, the arch support seems almost too much, and I question how much relieve I will gain by removing the bare insoles of the shoe. I guess I have many more miles to go, and with those miles I'll keep posting about 'em.

Summary So Far:
-Feels like a lot of arch support
-Narrower base => instability
-Superlight 6.2oz!!!
-Different mesh material. Not the standard flexible and elastic 5.0 material.
-Makes forefoot flexion weird.
-No longer a fast three second transition from no shoe to shoes or shoes to no shoes as possible with the 5.0's. You actually gotta unlace and lace these babies up. You also can't just remove the laces anymore and still expect these things to stay on your feet.