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Modern Minimalism

Now you have to make more of a conscious effort to get in shoes that don’t feel like pillows on your feet. I’m not alone among longtime runners in doing much of my running in what are marketed as racing shoes, because what’s now sold as a racing shoe is quite similar to what were sold as a lightweight training shoe twenty years ago.

If you’ve always run in modern, overly built running shoes, experiment with running in less shoe. Get a pair of lightweight trainers and gradually mix them into your shoe rotation. Start doing striders and hard workouts in racing shoes. At first you might experience some calf and Achilles tightness as these body parts relearn how to do what they’re supposed to do. But over time, if you’re like most runners who have gone this route, you’ll not want to return to the heavily cushioned shoes that too often get in the way of your run instead of getting out of the way and just letting you run.