The right mid-foot shoe for the over-pronator

First things first.  As always, I will claim victory before anything has been achieved.  Here is a motivational poster for your enjoyment.

Prelude

My history of running has been comical.  If Shakespeare was alive, he would write a couple of tragedies about my attempts to ‘run’.  Thankfully, my adamant gene is pretty strong and it is parked right next to the stupidity gene, so I refuse to give up.

I started running on random old tennis shoes.  Ran on that for a while.  Then upgraded to a ‘running’ shoe with the help of a helpful employee at Sportmart.  Ran on that till I came down with painful knee and ankle injury.

Just about this time, I went to highly knowledgeable running shoe store, who did a gait analysis and fitted me with an Asics Fortitude 3 and Spenco Polysorb insoles.  He gave the usual spiel about overweight over pronators aren’t meant to run etc.

This setup did one better, within a couple of runs, I moved from painful to crippled.  As in, couldn’t walk anywhere without limping or living on Naproxen.

Just around that time, I started to learn about ChiRunning, and learned the basics.  Mid-foot striking, no heel landing, improved cadence, the whole shebang.

With one minor problem, each time I tried to run with these set of shoes, I came down with painful knee and ankles.  I started working out in a gym to strengthen my quads, glutes and abductor muscles so that my knee pain started to subside, but the ankle pain went from bad to worse.

Right about this time, I tried the last thing I could – visit a podiatrist.  The podiatrist’s first word of advise to me – “You chose the wrong parents”.  Very helpful indeed.

X-Rays and couple of visits later, I was sent to see a prosthetic specialist who specializes in custom orthotics.  Yes, I was definitely moving up the value chain with respect to everything I can try.  This time, we outdid ourselves.  I would develop crippling ankle pain within the first 10 minutes of trying to run.  Yep, definitely all the fixes were working.

The podiatrist and prosthetic specialist had some, well ‘communication’ problems.  They both disagreed on what was the best thing to do for me.  Well, they agreed on one thing – that I should give up running and try to do something non-violent.  A couple of iterations later with respect to the orthotics, I finally ended up with orthotics that felt like they were made of cast iron that if I could stand on it for a couple of hours, it was a miracle.

With my last combination of experts suggested shoes and orthotics, I was developing knee pain within 15 minutes of wearing them and walking, forget even running.  This was the set of shoes and orthotics suggested by two running stores, validated by a podiatrist and custom made by a prosthetic professional.  I did a quick math on how much money was spent both by me and my insurance – and it was ridiculous.

My primary assumption that all these experts know what they are doing was wrong.  I called Asics and New Balance to find out the amount of in built correction that is pre-built into these shoes.  No one knows a precise number.  ie, it is a crap shoot.  You spend hundreds (if not thousands) of $ in trying to find a shoe and orthotic that fits your feet, that is made for a specific type of shoes that you have, but no one has precise information to start with.  You get a pair of orthotics, you fit it into the shoes and then you iterate by hacking through the orthotics till you reach a point where it doesn’t hurt you any more.  WTF!

The Awakening

Right around this time, thanks to the prodding of Mano, I started to read Born to Run and was completely enthralled by what I read.  Christopher McDougall’s experience was an eye opener.  Now, if I haven’t seen another person who is as curious as Mano.  Grappling with injuries himself, he read the book, thought about it, went out and bought Vibram five fingers and started to run barefoot.

Having drunk the mid-foot kool-aid from ChiRunning, the ideas were reinforced after reading Born to Run.  Mano’s experience with barefoot running was hugely encouraging.  However, the chicken I am, doing the barefoot full monty is too much of an ask at this time.  I digested as much information as I could with respect to running shoes and the way you wean them.  (Each of those links is a huge information source – check it out).

As my essential next stage, it boiled down to this.  I want to buy a neutral shoe that promotes mid-foot running but also has some support for my ankles.  I would start on these shoes with my custom orthotics and slowly wean off the orthotics.

The ideal shoe

NB 790

If you were lazy enough not to browse through all the hyperlinks on top , here is the summary.  If you are not quite ready yet to do the barefoot full monty, your ideal option is the New Balance 790 trail running shoe which offers just the barest minimum support there is.  But of course since it would make a lot of sense to keep producing such a shoe, New Balance has retired it.  It is still on sale in many online outlets for as low as $45, so if you are interested and you can find one that fits you, you should grab one.

But again, since these are really just one step above the vibrams, I chickened out again.  I wanted a shoe that would help me transition better into mid-foot strike from my heavy built up shoes.

The ideal transition shoe

In the meantime, my search for the ideal transition shoe came down to two choices.

Adidas Adizero Mana

New Balance MR800

The Adidas Adizero Mana shoe and the New Balance MR 800 a.k.a the Chirunning shoe.  I also checked out a whole lot of classic shoes.  Most running shoes that was made before 1981 doesn’t have any of the ‘R&D’ that has gone into running shoes.  Those are the shoes that you really need.

Now, all I had to do was to find one that fits me.

Does it fit?

The running shoe industry is either run by comedians (the mean ones who have the most fun at the expense of others) or very sarcastic people.  The shoes that you really want either won’t be available in your size or if they are available, won’t be available in the width you want.  If both of those fit, you forgot the height part.

All these low profile shoes come in only one size – “D”.  The over-engineered piece of crap shoes come in all sizes and all widths.  For starters, no one could agree on what my shoe width is.  My width measurement varied from ‘C’ to ‘EE’ based on which physical store you went.  If there was any standard with regards to the shoe sizes, it was that it will never fit.

Enter Zappos.  Not only are they the best place on earth to buy shoes, they have excellent customer service.  Given that my current Asics Gel Fortitude 3 12 EE fits, I asked Zappos to measure its width.  Once I had that information, I asked them to find a shoe that has nearly the same width among the shortlisted shoes I had.  And yes, eventually we had a winner.

The shoe

After nearly four weeks of this research (by which time Mano had actually run successfully on his Vibrams and is now a complete barefoot convert), I bought a 12.5 D New Balance MR 800.  The width was just great. It was a wee bit tight with my orthotics on the upper side (not width), once I lifted the tongue (?) up a bit and relaxed the laces, it fit fine. I played around with the lace position at the bottom holes and found one that works.

I have run 3-4 times on these shoes so far, all small runs, and I haven’t had any knee or ankle pains yet.  Given that my last set of shoes would give me both ankle and knee pain within 15 minutes of wearing them and walking, this is a huge improvement.

Surprisingly, even for this shoe, I can feel it instantly when I heel land and I think the shoe guides you to midfoot landing in general. I also think I was doing a bit of forefoot landing as well, I can feel my calves and Achilles working a bit harder than they should.

But this is where I am going to start. For a neutral shoe, I think there is some arch support in this shoe. Also the ankle area has some support which I need. The toe area is very wide and roomy, which is good.

I think I have found a pair of shoes on which I can try to run again.

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