I no longer love my Saucony Kinvara's

You may remember that in early November I purchased a new pair of running shoes - the Saucony Kinvara's. I had done my research and was excited to run in the shoe that is the top ranked shoe by many minimalist runners. The first two months (and about 50 miles) went well and I felt like I was running on my mid-foot more. The shoes were comfortable and although they had a tighter toe-box than my Nike Free's, my feet seemed to be fine. My legs felt great and I thought I had successfully transitioned to running in minimalist shoes.

At the beginning of 2011 I started my Half Marathon training and used the Saucony's for the majority of my miles (I still used my Nike Free's for about 2 of every 6 runs). All of a sudden, after only 4 or 5 days of training, it felt like one of my toes (the second smallest toe on my right foot) was hitting the front of toe box. After comparing the toe boxes on the Nike Free's and on the Saucony's, I noticed that the Saucony was tighter around the area that had been hurting me. I ran for a few days with a band-aid over the offending toe and the skin healed. Maybe the tighter toe-box wasn't for me after all.

As the next couple of weeks went by and I put more and more miles on my Saucony's, I began to notice that my feet had started to ache and that my calves were taking longer to recover from each hard run. I also noticed that when I switched and ran in my Nike Free's that for the first couple of miles the area in front of my arch on both feet ached. It was as if a bone was out of alignment. The pain was gone by the end of each Nike Free run, but I was confused as I never felt the pain in the Saucony's.

I paid more attention to my foot strike over the next couple of Saucony runs, and noticed that I was landing on my mid-foot but with the initial contact being slightly off to the lateral (outside) side of my foot. It wasn't a huge amount, but it was noticeable that the outside of my foot made contact first. After some research, I determined that it isn't uncommon for runners with a mid-foot strike to land initially on the lateral side of the foot and then roll in to the middle, so, I took a look at the wear pattern on the Saucony's and discovered the problem!

Areas of most wear

The black triangles are the harder, durable material that comes in contact with the ground and the yellow areas are a softer material which forms the rest of the sole of the shoe.

I noticed that the black triangles in the highlighted area had nearly completely worn down to the yellow softer material and that on the lateral side of the shoe, the yellow material was already been worn down - this after running just over 150 miles!

I am fully aware that I run most of my miles on the asphalt of the greenway or the concrete/asphalt sidewalks and that those surfaces are hard on shoes, but I'd expected to get more than 150 miles out of a pair of shoes that were built for road running. I am also aware that I am not landing completely flat on the black triangles and that it is most likely this that is causing the pain I have been feeling.

So, given that the toe box is too tight and that the black triangle design doesn't fit my running form, I have decided that I have run my last mile in the Saucony Kinvara's.