Picking The Best Running Shoe with Mitch Lorkin - The Running Company

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. Today's podcast episode, we have running enthusiast and running shoe specialist, Mitch Lorcan. Mitch Lorcan works at the running company. It's a company that has multiple stores around Australia, and they specialize in helping athletes find the right shoe. And they're really dedicated to making sure that athletes go through the entire experience of figuring out what their current running experience is like, what their current gate is, what their current biomechanics are doing, what their injury history is, and much more to help them find the right shoe. That is a whole range of things that is safe for them to run in, that will help them with their performance that they can train in and make sure that they get the most out of without injuring themselves. And there's a whole lot to that. And if anyone's ever been to a store to try on some running shoes, you'll know that there's a whole bunch of brands, it's a whole bunch of types of shoes. And for most of us, we don't even know where to start. We've either had the experience of just picking what we've picked before running in the same type of shoe our whole life. Picking a shoe because it looks good or the color because you've got no other factors to go off. Picking a shoe that maybe feels okay, you don't know whether that feeling is actually good or not. A whole range of things. And there's a real lack of knowledge out there about how to actually pick the right shoe for you. So that's everything we're going to talk about in this episode. And, dad, we loved it because it's questions we're always asking. We're always looking for more research behind what's actually the best shoe for people. And Mitch comes from a place of. And this is how he puts it in his own words, is we have just seen thousands and thousands of people come through the store. So we have a really good eye for what actually works and what doesn't because there isn't as much quantity of data around shoe performance. And so we really love that perspective and we love the insights that Mitch gave.

Yeah, exactly. Jordan. One of the things that I was really intrigued was the fact that every single person is suited to a particular style of shoe. And one of the things we want to, you know, ram home to everybody we coach is you can only race well if you get to the starting line. And if you've got a shoe that's going to create injury and you don't get to the starting line, it's going to be a very disappointing period of your athletic performance. So starting with the right shoes that fit you, when it doesn't matter what the brand is, it's good to have an unbiased opinion from someone who's just going to give you the right advice and what is suitable to you and what's going to get you to the start line without creating an injury stress that's going to be, you know, ending in a disappointing result. So I really loved it from that point of view. Really honing in on that, you know, people have individual needs in certain shoes will provide that for you. Um, just getting to know what your needs are first and then giving you the right shoe, that should get you to train properly and be injury free and get to race the way you want to on race day.

Absolutely. So without further ado, here is the episode. Mitch Lorcan, welcome to the Travelo podcast. Thanks for joining us here.

Thanks, guys. Good to see you both.

First question we want to ask is, what does running mean to you?

It's definitely changed over the years from when I was a kid. I was big into cross country at primary school, high school, not necessarily by choice either. I used to go over to the start of the cross country race just to get out of a couple of periods of class and then, and I would go in full uniform with bucks, 24 sevens on, no running gear. And then as soon as the gun would go, I would kind of go into a, you know, primal, like, state and bury myself. And afterwards often wonder why the hell, like, why it kept happening and why I was getting so caught up in it. And then got dragged along to a couple of cross country meets on weekends by my parents. Used to throw up, used to hate the car ride there. And to be honest, I probably burn out a bit on it in high school and then came back to it a bit later on in my early 20s, though, in A, I guess a much more approachable way, and really sort of fell in love with it again. And it's basically become, you know, a big part of my work life, you know, for an obvious reason. But I just genuinely love getting other people excited about running and, you know, getting them comfortable running, passing on things that I've picked up over the years. So it's kind of become, you Know, it's taught me a lot and it's a vehicle for me to help pass on information to other people as well.

That's a great answer. And so the next step is, how did you become so obsessed with shoes?

I actually, I, when I was at uni studying, I was a customer at Clifton Hill, the running company. And Chris served me at the time. And I remember being fascinated with how detailed everything was. And I'd say my brain sort of works in a sort of fairly analytical way. Like I would attach myself to things that haven't, I guess an analytical or process based or systematic approach to things. Which is why I like, you know, the training side of it too. Like just everything fits together in a neat way to create an outcome. And so when I left the shop I sort of said, oh, this might be a good job while I'm at, you know, uni. Anyway, I finished my course and then after I finished uni I actually kind of had realized that it was probably a lot more exciting and interesting than what my course was going to let me do. So I ended up working there. And then as things evolved and I got more experience, I eventually ended up going out on my own and opening Albert park, which is where we are today. But yeah, just true, I guess like loving, loving the work and loving how, yeah, how much we could like once I realized how important shoes were as a, I guess a training tool and given how much time spending people spending them, I realized how like much of a influence it could have and how many, how well you could use them to kind of encourage certain things or offload others. And that really drew me in.

And yeah, how have you in that period seen the changes that have evolved in the, in the actual structure and functionality of shoes over the, over the journey? Has it been a big improvement? And obviously, you know, we've seen the last couple of years with the carbon soles. What's your take on all of that?

Yeah, definitely from a performance point of view there's been been a huge shift and that's fairly well measured now in the labs in terms of what we know that the shoes can do for people. But even if you look in a more broad sense at I guess population in some of these big marathon events or even halves and even in an Ironman distance or 70.3, you can see that a lot like it's getting faster average times even to a point. There's some people that won't get as big a benefit as others depending on how fast they're moving. But even in the last five years, like it's every year a half marathon loses a couple of seconds. We saw Kipchoge do some crazy things and outside of them being exceptional athletes, there's no doubt about it. The shoes have had a massive part of that too. Not just from the actual race, but what it's allowing them to do in training in terms of doing more, not getting his beat up, you know, being able to recruit more because they're moving faster. So they all kind of added up and that's, I think that's probably footwear have a huge, had a big role to play in the improvements that we've seen across the board. Even on the track. I don't know if you were paying attention at Tokyo, you would have seen a lot of the same athletes wearing very similar spikes. And you know, we're seeing like the 5k and 10k track records being, getting close to being challenged. They kind of seemed like Everest records that were not going to be knocked off anytime soon. And even, yeah, even at middle distance level, if we could remove the clean records from the dirty ones, which is hard to know, I think they're probably getting closer there too, over 15 and maybe the mile.

But yeah, I'd love to. We will get into the performance shoes a lot more later in the conversation, but from a more big picture point of view, I guess thinking from that perspective, how important are shoes for people and you said before you realize they're such an important tool to get right. Yet for most of us, we kind of just wear the same shoes that we've worn all our life or we don't. We just kind of pick one because the selection is so big you don't know what's right or not. How important is it to get this right?

Well, if you look at sort of your typical week for someone who's predominantly running, you can assume that they would spend between 70 to 80% of their week doing sort of easy zone one, zone two, maybe slightly faster, depending on how developed they are in a shoe that we would consider sort of your mileage shoe, which, that's the shoe that you really need to have. Safe in the sense that you're going to spend most of your time in it. So if you have something slightly off and we look at the repetitive stress of running, you know, say 170 steps per minute, it doesn't take long to see why that repetitive stress could be causing, you know, a tissue stress to break down or develop into something more sinister. So the way that we would look at footwear for most people is we're trying to make a conservative choice where they're ending up in something that suits their mechanics firstly, but also potentially avoids anything that we pick up that they might be prone to. So say someone has a limited range of motion through one of their ankle joints because they had a history of, you know, tip and fib fracture from football or something. We wouldn't be looking at shoes that are, you know, with a lower pitch, would be trying to offload that because if the foot doesn't have motion through the ankle joint, it'll find it elsewhere, which sometimes means tracking in or out. And that can change things above the foot too. So when I say conservative, I don't mean anything other than trying to make a choice where that person's going to spend most of their week not causing tissue stress from a shoe. And I guess you were an interesting case of that to use you, but also really common because we stay overwhelmingly, I'd say most of the issues we would see is people with neutral mechanics, which I'll get into in a sec. What that actually means running in shoes that are structured and they're basically mismatch. You're working against the shoe. And the shoe, although it sounds good on paper in that it's more supportive, is actually causing tissue stress because it's not allowing you to shift weight in a, in a natural and safe way. And a lot of the time we'll see a person being loaded to the outside edge of their foot and we're not getting weight through the big toe, you know, much in the same way with a cycling cleat, you want that first MPJ to be lined up right with that big toe because it's big for a reason. It does a lot of work and it's powerful. The same thing applies with a running gate. You don't want to shift weight away from that big toe, but there are instances where we do need to try and limit how much range of motion the big toe goes through. So, yeah, they're different. I guess we look at them as tools in a way nearly to try and encourage some things sometimes and then discourage them others.

Let's dive into that. Let's talk about some of the poor assumptions or biases that people have and the mismatches that you see. And yeah, explain that kind of that neutral. That neutral gait compared to a non neutral gate.

Yeah, so a neutral shoe. A neutral shoe is basically a balanced platform. So this is probably one of the shoes that we use the most. Only in that a lot of People actually just really love the feel of this shoe.

For the people who are just listening on audio and not watching. What shoe is that?

This is a Brooks Ghost. So, you know, I'd say Brooks are probably the most overlooked brand in running. There's nothing glamorous about this shoe. I mean, it's not as exciting as a vapor flyer and fly, but it doesn't need to be, because this is exactly what I was talking about before. This is a workhorse. It's really stable. If you look at it from the top, you can see that medial edge is nice and flat and filled in through the midfoot. So you get a nice contact area through those areas where people tend to shift weight if they're a little less stable underneath. There's no sort of huge flex groove, so the shoe's relatively stiff. And one of the things that you don't want to see shoes doing is bending under the rear foot, because your foot's not articulated there either. So we don't. Oh, at the ankle joint it is. But we don't want to see the shoe flexing under there because it can kind of cause a sudden moment loading as well when you're hitting the ground, because you get this sort of tweaked compression, particularly as people get fatigued, and that can cause stuff through Plantar Solaire's calf Achilles getting overworked.

Is there a shoe that does that specifically that? I mean, you probably don't have an.

Issue under the rear foot. So you see it a fair bit with, I'd say, people getting into super shoes and then doing too much easy mileage when they're starting to run at a lower pace. If you look at the rear of those shoes, there's really not much rubber coverage to start with, like the forefoot. Obviously there is. And so if you're coming through flat, you're going to just turn this back off of the shoe to mush pretty quickly. I mean, if I can compress it in my hand, you can imagine what three to four times your body weight does. So having. Having a more stable rear foot when you're running at a lower speed and you're, you know, potentially fatigued or got compromised mechanics because you're not that mechanically sound. This is a safe shoe, and a super shoe in that sense would be really risky.

Yeah.

Outside of being risky, you would be chewing through them in a matter of weeks.

We're there, 380 bucks. It's not what you want to be doing, and it's. We were talking about the fact that you know, you see a lot of people just casually walking around in super shoes because they, they might just go to the shop and decide that oh, this is Nike's top shoe. It must be the best shoe. Not knowing that it is designed for high speed performance. And like you're saying if you're, if you're too slow on it, walking or jogging, then it just completely defeats the purpose of the shoe.

Yeah. And like you, I guess you can thank the Internet a little bit for that because all you'd have to do is go Google best running shoe and instead of getting anything, you know, personal personally tailored and like, I guess this differs in that everyone's so individualized in what they need. There's not a one size fits all approach even in a super shoe sense. Like not everyone is going to get the same percentage improvement in the vapor and alpha as some other athlete will. And that'll depend on your size, your mechanics, how fast you're moving, all of those sort of things. So when often people come in and say what's the best shoe? It's a, how long is a piece of string question. And have you got time to go through this now? And let's figure it out because we need to do a little bit of work to find what's going to work for people. And generally that means we need to look at them barefoot, both rear foot and from the front and get an idea of how they distribute weight through their foot structure. And I guess a common misconception as well around that is a lot of people will walk in and tell us that they pronate or they over pronate which is just like saying, I don't know, a really obvious movement with the foot. Say I blink often because you need to to lubricate your eyes. And just in the same way you need to shift weight medially to absorb shock. People do have different amounts that they pronate but historically negative thing and being the root cause of a lot of running related injuries. But we sort of more look at whether there's where the weight is being distributed through that movement and whether there's likely to be a tissue stress in each case because of their movement. And some people that'll be a fractional movement, for others that'll be, you know, their ankle bone can nearly hit the ground. And I've seen people that have run in neutral shoes their entire lives at a really high level that literally dump weight. Horrible. If you filmed them and you don't want to show them either because you know we're talking about nearly Acute angles at rear foot. Yeah, but they've never had any issue through that medial chain and all. So you can't really use it because no one's ever been able to in research or otherwise quantify how much is too much. So it's a, it's nearly pointless and irrelevant. All we need to do is provide the foot in any case with a stable platform to do its natural thing. And for some people, that'll be a neutral shoe, like the Ghost, and for others, they might need a little bit of extra help through the inside edge, where you would go to something slightly more built up. And traditionally that's been graduated. So the midsole will have sort of a high density foam on the medial edge that tapers off towards the softer foam on the lateral edge. And that just helps that person as they land and shift weight medially, not compress and deform that medial edge so they're not working harder to bring their foot back into that neutral position. As a general rule, people look stable barefoot and that weight distribution is nice and even and we can see the big toe getting reasonable activation. They're going to look good in a neutral shoe. And if you look good in a neutral shoe in a stability sense, it makes no sense to jump into a structured shoe. You're not getting any extra benefit. You're more likely to be causing a problem by changing what happens above the foot, like getting fairly inconsistent muscle engagement through your posterior chain and through calf and soleus as well, because the weight's no longer getting pushed through the big toe. So you make a compromise. And I'd say more issues related to people being overcorrected than people being unstable. As a general observation.

Just on some things you've just said, just want to pick up on your advice on if you've got an athlete who's been running really well and has very few injuries over his career, and he might be in his 40s, has been a good runner and he comes to you to get a new pair of shoes and you check him out the way that you would do thoroughly with every person who comes in and you notice that the shoe he's been wearing his entire running career is not the correct shoe yet. They've, they've, they've run quite successfully. They haven't had many injuries. What, how do you approach that athlete? And, and would you recommend that they, they go into a shoe? That's more. And what is the risk with changing shoes to something they've never run in before? That's got a different Sort of feel to their planting of their foot every time they stride out.

Yeah. And so if they've been uninjured over 40 years, there's probably a good chance they've adapted to the way that that shoe, although that type of shoe allows them, I guess, to shift weight. So it's not always like, we're not. We can sometimes we just change it because it's going to feel better. Like, if you only know what you know, then it's worth trying on the odd chance that it'll actually feel even smoother and more natural. And a lot of the time, because of the training history of someone like that, they've got, you know, they're pretty resilient to those minute stresses anyway. And generally, if we get them trying something that makes more sense based on their mechanics, it'll feel good. And we really don't need to communicate, convince them too much, because once you. Once you kind of talk them through what's happening and we show them a little bit of footage and they can see what's occurring when we make the change, it's not too hard then to get them running outside and they'll go, actually, it feels like I don't have shoes on anymore. Instead of, you know, I guess a lot of the time people will be looking for something that feels like it's really supporting the foot or like snug around the foot, which is exactly what we don't want to go for. We want it to feel like the person doesn't have a shoe on.

I guess it's a good time to ask about injury risk and feedback you have from athletes when they do finally change shoes. They might change to something that actually suits them better, but there's still got to be an adjustment period for that person with a new shoe, even if it's biomechanically the right fit.

Yeah. And it'd be just in the same way. Track season rolls around for you and you want to jump in a spike again, after jogging in a shoe with, you know, much more midsole underneath your foot, you're going to increase the range of motion through quite a few of those tissues, and then you will need to adjust slowly. You don't want to just jump in and run a 5k race in a spike at the start of the season because you'll get smashed. And if you try and push through that in the next training week, you can sometimes come quite undone. So we can talk people through that, but most of the time we're not going to make decisions for changing Shoes that are risky because it's the opposite of what we do. We want to reduce stress, but sometimes that means another tissue might go through a slightly bigger range of motion or work slightly harder. But it's a healthy thing. It should be doing more than it has been. And it gives another tissue that's been doing too much a chance to calm down. And we get, you know, restorative function of the foot again. So it's always with the intention to get proper, you know, safe function out of the foot, not create risk because, you know, that's. No one needs that.

No.

And it's. Jordan's a good example of this, changing shoes from what he's been running in for a while. And probably a combination of things can happen to you during that transition period. If you actually jump into a training session that's maybe a little bit too long, it's got too much load. With a different shoe, you could actually create a risk issue there. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, I think, yeah, everyone will have different sort of breaching point for that, I guess, that capacity for stress. What's hard to know though with that situation is whether it was the training session or the shoe that was the tipping point. You know, we can, sometimes we can get everything right in the store and someone goes away and gets excited by the fact that they've got a new, I guess, shoe or something and they go from running, say three sessions normally per week to doing five runs in the following three weeks. That's, you know, a significant increase in load and even don't matter what shoe you put yourself in, you're still going to have a breakdown. So their shoes are only part of the picture. You still gotta be smart about how you train and how you apply stress to the body. But yeah, I guess we wouldn't advise someone to say, swap a shoe and then go out and do a key race simulation that weekend, having never done a couple of faster sessions in it. Because the conservative thing to do with that would be at least get an idea first of how you're going to pull up in it, especially moving closer to a race and get a feel for it. A lot of the newer stuff, the more performance based stuff, there's an element of having to learn the feel of the shoe and how to run in it. Nearly like a tennis racket, having a sweet spot. And so you want to do that as a bare minimum, but also to see how your body responds to the change and whether you're going to need more of a period to kind of, I Guess adjust to it.

Is there much difference, Sorry, Jordan. Is there much difference between you training in your everyday workhorse shoe like the Brooks Ghost that you've recommended, and then jumping into a fast set of, you know, road racing shoes with, with the carbon sole? Is there, is there going to be a big contrast in the feel to that?

Yeah. In short, yeah. Most people would notice a significant difference in just how much energy you're getting back in a force out or force in, force out sense. So a lot of those newer midsoles are designed to be really high rebound and they have quite an elastic property. But that also means that they're compromised on durability and stability because they're quite soft and, you know, mushy, as opposed to sort of denser and more stable compounds that are in your mileage shoes. They tend to be a lot more cut away. And obviously the carbon fiber plate in the midsole gives it a quite a snappy feeling. So a lot of people feel like they're nearly getting levered forward and it creates this sort of forward feeling movement, particularly as the relative velocity increases when they're running.

And what about the live, sorry, cutting. In you go.

Jordan, just in that sense is you've got to be careful with what you spoke about before with shoes potentially giving you extra tissue recruitment and especially if you're getting that spring forward with the super shoe, you've got to be really careful that you're not running faster than you're actually capable of just because the shoe's propelling you forward.

Yeah. And it's a, it's an easy trap, you know, to fall into. All of a sudden you go out and you start running all of your easy KS zone 3. And then, you know, you realize that you're exhausted at the end of the week. Or yeah, you, you compromise in the shoe because it's not as stable. So you're using tissues that you wouldn't normally use a lot more just to get through an easy run. Plus the shoes, you can see then the relationship between sort of making a safe workhorse and then having the shoe that allows you to work run fast when you need to. There's very specific things they don't cross over too well in running.

And plus the shoes have such limited mileage on them because they, they, they've only got potentially some top pro marathon runners are wearing the alpha flies once in a marathon and then they're getting rid of it. But for most other people, they might get 100k out of them, but that, that won't last you very many weeks if it's your mileage shoe, you know.

Yeah. No. And like, we've had people that have come in to update their shoes, having bought, say, an Alpha or a vapor online and been horribly disappointed at how little mileage they got out of it, but only to find out that it wasn't a shoe to jog in, that it's like driving a Ferrari in traffic. They don't like staying in fast first.

Yeah.

You know, they need to be on a road or like an open road anyway, or a racetrack. Yep.

So this is a. Just a great process to learn. And a lot of the stuff you're saying is just gold information and the conversations we have with athletes that they just have no idea what shoe to pick. And so hearing a lot of this stuff is so good. But it comes back to what you said before with it, you know, the information being how long is a piece of string. So can we take it back to that kind of starting process where you're getting someone in and then you're looking through their gate. What are the key things you're looking for? What should people try to be aware of themselves? And then. And then where do you go next?

I guess the first thing we really try and understand before we get anyone on the treadmill is unpacking as much as we can about their training history, their injury history, their shoe history, anything that's going to potentially give us insight into why they might be if they are in an injured state. If there's referral information from a practitioner, we generally digest a bit of that, too, just to create as clear a picture as possible. And then the treadmill really just helps us confirm or deny certain things by looking at the way that they're moving. And sometimes we pick up things that haven't been mentioned, and sometimes it's not a shoe thing. So we're very willing to. And aware when we need to use other people in our network, which we do readily to get another perspective first. But then they will end up solving the problem by maybe they needed to do. I guess a lot of the time it's a strength component that's missing from their training. And it's immediately obvious when you watch people run. So we can sort that out. And the shoe is just a complementary part of that process. But it wasn't the. I guess the kryptonite or the thing that was really causing the problem. The other thing I'd say is offside of the treadmill. One of the most overlooked things for sure, with A running shoe, as opposed to any other shoe, is how people fit it from a space perspective. I think we talked about this, too, but I don't want to gloss over it because it probably has as much influence as anything else that you would look at, if not more. But from an injury point of view, this causes probably as much, in my opinion, if not more stress to the planet than anything. But if you imagine the foot when it's hitting the ground, it's kind of like a frog hitting glass. So it splays under load, and your foot is. You know, they say it should be as dexterous as your hand. We all know that's fairly unachievable. But it is flexible and it is articulated for a reason, because it needs to simultaneously be able to absorb that ground contact shock and then turn that into elastic energy when the big toe whips through and that windmill mechanism occurs. So it makes no sense then to have your foot jammed in a shoe or snug in a shoe because you're putting pressure across those metatarsal junctions. And in a lot of cases, you're deviating that big toe so that joint doesn't have correct alignment. It's pretty hard for it to really engage. You're also going to create stress by hitting the end of the shoe 170 times per minute, which, if you imagine three to four times your body weight through your foot, that's a lot of force. We're talking about tons of force being misdirected through your foot structure. And if you don't get into a bigger shoe, your body's going to try and solve the problem for you by retracting your toes. And that means putting the planter under excessive tension. And then after a while, if you're continually keeping that planter from lengthening and getting into relaxed position, you can just set off the tissue at the insertion. So I would say from what we gathered in the store, we set up a spreadsheet to get data on people that we were seeing present with plantar fasciitis or similar plantar stress. And nearly 95% of the time, or 96% of the time on the spreadsheet, that people were between one to one and a half sizes too small. So their shoes are always too small. You nearly don't reach down and feel the end of the shoe with plantar fasciitis sufferers and find that they've got space. I guess the misconception is that if the shoe's snug, they've got support like snug equals supportive, which is not true at all. Snug is doing the reverse to your foot. It's turning it into a fist at the end of your leg rather than a spring. And sometimes we'll swap people into a bigger shoe and they'll push us on a little bit. I've always been an 8, which has always been too small, but once they run outside and they go, oh, wow, I can actually feel, you know, I can feel like my big toe is actually working. And because it's the first time it's been able to actually get into a position where it can be loaded up properly. So the size is the thing that you really need to have sorted. And that probably is compounded in longer events, or an event like an ironman, where you're going to spend a few hours on the bike as well, with centrifugal forces sending plasma and all sorts of body fluid down to your feet. And then you're putting it into a shoe and then running a marathon. If you don't have the correct fitting shoe, at a bare minimum, you're going to damage your toenails. And before. I know a lot of people see it as a badge of honor, but if you dropping toenails, there's something wrong. Your shoes don't fit. It's not a normal part of running. It's. There's a. There's a mechanical reason for why there's stress being applied at the end of the. At the toes. So if you allow a little bit more space, and that doesn't mean getting, you know, sloppy or having like, you know, four different pairs of shoes that are a size bigger each time, just getting the correct fit across the foot. And a lot of the time that'll mean going to another width rather than going up too many sizes to get the width, because that's not the correct way to really get the true fit. But, yeah, there's a real method to making sure the shoe fits properly. And that's a big part of, I guess, what we do. It's simple, but it's often overlooked.

And you guys are going one to one and a half sizes bigger than the person's shoe size. If they're normally wearing a nine, you'll put them in in ten and ten and a half.

Yeah. So. Well, and it's not a hard and fast rule because it will depend a lot on the size of the person and then how much force they're going through or is going through their foot. Sorry. So if someone comes in and they're, you know, 6 foot, 4 and they've got a size 13 foot to the end of their toe. They've got a lot more force going through their foot and their foot is going to splay a lot more. So you generally leave a little bit more space for a smaller foot. Not going to need to expand as much. There's less force, less smaller foot structure and also smaller longitudinal arch too. So it depends a little bit on the foot shape for some people, because if you measure from the heel to the first mpj on some people.

The.

Ratio is longer than relative to the overall foot. So you would take a bigger size because when they hit the ground, they're going to actually lengthen further than someone with a more canvas foot type where the foot's, I guess, high, arched and rigid. They don't have a lot of articulation through their foot so they're not going to lengthen as much during their running cycle. So they don't need as big as. But that's only something that you kind of get to know from just looking at lots and lots and lots of bare feet and watching a lot of people run. But sometimes I measure people and they stand up and they even just standing there with body weight going through their feet, they lengthen a size and they're already on the end again. So naturally you need to allow more space for when the running occurs.

So at this point you've kind of got their gait, you're getting the sizing right. How do you then even start with a brand? Because I know that you showed the Brooks Ghost before and that's a bit of a go to shoe potentially, but where do you even start with brands? And once you pick a brand, what type or I mean, talk us through that.

Yeah, well, the Ghost we don't bring out for everyone. I use it as a good, stable, neutral example because I think they really nailed what a training shoe needs in all its parts. Stable fits well, feels good to a lot of people, but it'll depend on what we're seeing. So, like, if your foot's, you know, you've got a wider toe splay, we'll be looking at brands that tend to offer a more open toe box or more space across the toe box, which are. Well, most of them do them. It depends on the shape of the foot. So, like, all the brands will do a wider fit within reason. Nike in Australia don't bring in a lot of width options. It's pretty much a unisex last, which is slightly wider for women and narrower for men. But A lot of the other brands will do widths, and then it just depends on the shape. I wish I could kind of break down that a little bit more, but it's very much this subconscious thing that, you know, you scan their foot with your eyes, I guess, and kind of already know what I'm going to go grab. And a couple options that are going to work well and then some more, I guess, anomalies that could potentially feel good if what I think I could see is actually occurring. And then it's, we really just need to get them running. So we take them outside or in cases where they're slightly more mobile, through their foot, and we need to look at the stability a little bit more closely. We'll get them up on the treadmill in each shoe first to make sure they're coming to the balanced position, and then we'll work through the shoes outside. I know a lot of people try them on and stand in them, but if you're not running in the shoe and that's what you're planning to do with it, it's really hard to know how it feels and whether it's going to work for you. So we have a couple of little cues that we give people to help work through the appropriate options outside and see which ones are most comfortable, which I think we did with you, too. General rule is to kind of get someone in a shoe that they feel like isn't there.

What I liked about the process was, yeah, you didn't necessarily love a specific brand you just brought out, okay, these are the neutral shoes that could potentially work for you. Here's a bit of a range and let's have a crack in them. But.

One thing worth saying with shoes, it's quite different to, say, getting a bike. You know, you don't. You. As you spend more money, you don't get better componentry. The laces don't get spun out of gold, and, you know, you don't need to spend a lot of money to get a good shoe. So the brand thing is, you know, they all make neutral shoes. They all make structured shoes. Some of them make more safe neutral shoes than others for the typical athlete. So it'll depend a lot on what we've picked up. You know, if you're a more efficient runner with sound mechanics, we can probably play around the edges a little bit more with, you know, shoe options.

So I know it's hard to break down, but can. Can you help us and the listener just get a sense of potentially, what do you think certain brands are aiming to do because. Or does it really not matter? They all bring out a neutral shoe, they all bring out a wider shoe. It's just tried on and what feels best? Or is there a way to kind of narrow down? You know, the Hawkers are aiming for this kind of thing and the Brooks are aiming to be more, more neutral and the Asics are trying to be more of a support issue. Could you break that down?

Every brand will sort of have a bit of a DNA in like what they're known for. For Mizuno, they've always been wedded to this wave plate idea. You know, I guess Nike, they don't really attach themselves to one particular thing, but they've definitely, at least in the last 10 years been the people that have pushed the envelope with performance pretty unfairly too. Like every other brand was kind of scraping together to try and come up with a super shoe after they initially did it. I actually, the other day I looked at the original one and I was, I remember putting it on my foot the first time and thinking, wow, this is a crazy shoe. This is a full game changing shoe. And then I looked at it in comparison to today's super shoes and it's like it's not that cushioned and it looks quite thin. But when I saw it back then I was like, it looks like a moon shoe. I've never seen anything like it. So it really has progressed quite quickly. Like it's allowed other brands. Like if you have a DNA that is particular, it allows you to kind of find a crack in an industry that's got a lot of long term players. Like I think the second youngest brand that we stock is probably Nike and Hoka would be the youngest or maybe Altra. But because they're doing something different, like they're sort of known for more cushioning than a lot of the other brands. You know, they were started by two French ultra marathoners so they increased the midsole stack height to see what effect it had on longer distance races. And that worked for some people. So they sort of have found their niche and they're a little bit more geared towards providing a highly cushioned platform at a low weight in a lot of their models. Brooks aren't trying to reinvent the wheel and they make really safe shoes, which is why I personally like them. Because I don't need to reinvent the wheel with every person that comes in. I want to get them moving safely. And most of the time, yeah, that's. It is a ghost for a lot of rec level Athletes or, you know, a glycerin or equivalent. And if you just looked at, I guess a snapshot of the population, like I'd probably say that 75 to 80% of people are better off in neutral shoes based on what I see on the treadmill. But if you look at the sales breakdown across the country, it's probably more flipped and somewhere like 75 to 80% of people are wearing structured shoes. Which tells you one thing, that too many people are wearing the wrong type of shoe. Yeah. Category wise anyway.

If you found that the older athlete are suited to a particular brand that you would direct them to as compared to the younger athlete who might have a, you know, might be running. Let's just give pacing. If someone's able to run, you know, 230, 240 per km pace, 3 minute K pace to 3:30 and all the way up to 5 minute, 6 minute K paces. Are you directing people to a particular shoe obviously based on their running, gait and planting, but in terms of the speed that they run at, no.

In short answer is no. Like there's a point, I guess from a performance point of view where if you're running, you know, as you said, 240, 250 pace, you're going to probably be better off using a super shoe as opposed to a, you know, a haka Bondi because that's probably going to get in the way of how well you move. But that, because that's not really a typical training pace where they're going to spend 80% of their week. We wouldn't use pace too much to dictate the type of shoe we're going for outside of them needing something that's specific for racing. So when people come in and they tell you their pace, it's kind of irrelevant in a way because it doesn't probably dictate too much in how we're going to look at stability through the foot. And I'm definitely not getting anyone, even if they told me they can run 240pace on the treadmill at that speed because it could be fairly catastrophic. Yeah, no, yeah. We don't really look at pace as a dictating thing. It would be more about how efficient the runner is. We can probably get away with a little more with someone who's got, you know, quite sound mechanics, has been running a long time, can deal with a high load each week as opposed to a, you know, an older athlete might have a, you know, huge training history or not. We want to make, I guess a safer decision or Problem solving for them.

I suppose I'm thinking a little bit in line of the Ironman triathlete who's running a marathon and could possibly be only running 6 to 7 minute K pace if they're in a really fast shoe. Are they going to be better off running in a training shoe than trying to run in a, you know, in a carbon plated shoe where they're, they're just not running fast. It's almost like you know, the slowest paces they can possibly hold for 42k.

When part of that is only answerable in a case by case, I guess situation. But in a general sense, yes, you'd be better off in a shoe that is more stable because the performance benefit of running in an alpha fly when you're running 6 minute k's is probably fairly negligent. I think there's probably more risk induced than there would be performance gained in that case. If someone has the capacity to run you know, 3 minutes 30 for their marathon off the bike, which would make them fairly elite I guess too. But I guess the point is and they blow up and they end up running 6 minute ks there's still point for them to wear the shoe. They just didn't have their day. But if your race pace is at best going to be six minutes, if everything goes to plan, don't worry about the alpha fly because it's not going to make a difference for you. You'd be better off getting through the race and putting more I guess into the training and looking how you could tweak things to get that relative race pace up. And then you know that, you know, there's probably more screws to turn with the shoe down the track but it's not going to be the thing that'll, you know, get you there. Like we can't look for the shoe for the answer for everything I guess what I'm saying.

So do you know where that line is of approximately where the performance gain just decreases so much and the increased risk of the lack of stability in the, in the super shoes, the alpha flowers or something. I know that at the top end they, they've started to do some study on. It's like a 3% increase or something in, in the person's ability to. I know I can't remember what that study was referring to with the 3%, whether it was time or. But where that would, that would decrease, that decreases obviously the slower you go. So at what point that that line is about it?

Well, if you're looking at it, yeah, it doesn't have a hard and fast line because of the individual nature of so many people's mechanics. Like there's probably a. There is probably a theory in there that even though that person's running 6 minute k's for that race, they might have only been running 6 minute 30ks if they had otherwise not been in it. Because they're getting quite a bit of, you know, energy back or I guess they're stopping the loss of energy that they would have normally had in a shoe. A lot of the studies though, good. Some of them use some fairly odd samples sizes. Like a lot of them don't include women, which is kind of weird given that they're selling them at that level too. And like women are using the shoes and breaking records too and they've been fairly small groups. I think there'll be more testing that'll be done, but there's not a significant cutoff point where you're going to lose the benefit. It's just kind of becomes pointless in a way because it would be until you find out otherwise. And you'd probably need to do the study on the person, you know, like individually to know. I'd say there'd be still more benefit in getting in a safe shoe and running more K's and you know, getting fitter, you know, training more and training smarter.

That's a really good answer. One of the things I'm intrigued at is what would your advice be to an athlete who you know what should be in his bag? Should he have a couple of pair of training shoes and one racing shoe going at the one time? How many shoes should you really have going at the one time? If you're a guy who's competing or girl who's competing in a Half Marathon or 10K or an Ironman Olympic distance instance, 10K. How many shoes should you have going at the one time?

I'm obviously going to say a lot, I think kind of I look at it from consecutive days running a lot of the time. Because if you were say like for arbitrary number running 30Ks a week, which would probably be a fairly average distance for people that we'd see come through, sometimes that means they're running consecutive days like back to back, and they might have a high load day and then a low load day. And that point you're probably going to start to benefit from firstly just breaking up the repetitiveness of running in the same shoe because you're going to use your feet and your body above your foot in a slightly different though safe way. And Given what we know about running related injuries and the repetitive stress of them, anything that we can do to regulate repetitive stress is going to be a healthy thing. Just in the same way that like, you know, running on different surfaces can help regulate that too. So multiple shoes, if you're invested in your sport, is always a good idea as long as they're safe. That doesn't mean four different alpha fly colorways each day of the week. It means, you know, maybe one day you were running in a slightly higher stack shoe and then you're running in a slightly lower stack shoe or something slightly more flexible just to sort of break it up a little bit. From a performance point of view, if you, you know, I guess like if you were someone who did a day, a week where you went down to the track and did some fast 2002 and you're invested enough to buy a spike, it makes sense to put the spike on and do the fast 2000s a lot of the time if you can get away with it. Because you're going to be for the sense of the workout anyway, trying to recruit as many fast twitch fibers as possible. So if the shoe is going to allow you to go faster and recruit more fast pitch, there's more sense to doing that for the workout with the outcome that we want. And I guess the same way with a mileage shoe, you put it on and it lets you go run for two hours which is the, you know, we want to build some aerobic capacity and you had a choice between that and another shoe which is a little bit thin and you start to get sore through your calves. And planner when you run too far in it. The obvious sense is to have the shoe that lets you go long and protects you. There is always going to be merit to having multiple shoes depending on what you're doing.

And that includes potentially a race day shoe. Picking a shoe.

Yeah, for sure. Again, if it's your first sprint distance try and you just want to give it a go and see how you feel, it's probably not too necessary to go and get a racing shoe. You could potentially love it. But I think it's more important again to have that training shoe dialed in. And then as you sort of get more into it, you will find that you need, you know, a different, you'll prefer a different shoe even for different things depending on what you're trying to achieve.

Some unbelievable information you've given us. Mitch, I guess a couple of questions to finish off. What do you want the listeners to know about shoes? Is there any more Misconceptions we haven't covered or just information that you want to get across that you feel is really important. Important for people to know.

I would say if you're not time poor, it's always worth going through the options because they change all the time. And just because one shoe worked for you at one point, it doesn't mean the current version of it will. Because even though it looks the same and it carries the same name, some odd things happen with what they do with the shoe. They might decide to make it softer, they might decide to make it more cushioned and off the shelf. Buying without sort of trying and getting a feel for it first. It's a bit risky. So if you can get into a run specialty store and go through the process properly, you know you're going to end up in something that makes sense mechanically and you'll go through the options and you'll end up in something every time that feels comfortable too. So I would always just, I would always just put the time aside to go try it. Like you would test ride a bike. You got to get on it to kind of get a feel for it.

It's as most important, I was talking to my other son Matt the other day about a mattress that he was sleeping on. And you spend, you know how many hours a day on that bed, you want to make sure you've got the one that suits you. And same with running, you're going to spend, you know, your passion is running. You want to make sure that you're, you're putting the shoe on that's going to enable you to stay injury free. And that's one of the messages that I'm sure you, you must see when people come in. I've had this shoe, I've been injured, you know, and they're just running in the wrong shoe.

Yeah, I guess it's like analogous with how much money and time people would invest in a bike fit for performance. And we do it also to prevent injury and overuse. It's the same thing when you're looking at shoes, although they cost a lot less. So people tend to skim over them. But it has just as big an influence and a lot of the time you're spending as much time in the shoe, so you want to have it right.

Last question, and this could be a tough one for you to answer, but I want you to give us your personal favorite, favorite just mileage trainer shoe, your favorite kind of maybe more high intensity training shoe and your favorite race shoe. And before you answer, I must Caveat that I want your answer here for the listener. This doesn't mean go out and buy this shoe. I'm just interested to see what you come up with because you see so many shoes, you know them all so well. But this. I can imagine that whatever you say, a whole bunch of people go out, just buy that straight away. That's not what we're saying.

I'm at the expense of sounding biased here, because a few of the shoes that I'm gonna pick up are from the same brand.

That's what I'm interested in.

I brought a couple, actually. You know, I'd say I'm lying. I'd be splitting hairs if I said I had a favorite between this and this for, I guess, anything up to a marathon.

What are they? What do you. What do you got in your hands?

I've got a Vapor fly in one hand. And this is an RC Elite, which is New Balance's, I guess, equivalent. This is probably a slightly more durable shoe than the vapor fly, which is why I also like it. You can go down and do, you know, warm up in it even. It feels good to run a little bit slower than I'd say this does that a vaporfly does. And then do, you know, K reps or, you know, a threshold or something like that. It feels light and snappy. This would be my preference if I was racing, though. I just. It has a slightly more lively feel on some of the longer runs where I've needed to do a portion of it at like a race pace simulation. I've used the Alpha because you're out there for, you know, two hours plus sometimes is a little bit more shoe underfoot. I just find I don't get as beat up. So I like that. For the longer duration workouts, I don't. Oh, actually, yeah, I do sec. Have to wiggle some stuff around here. You're right everywhere.

Mitch is actually in at the running store, so he's got a whole bunch of shoes here, which is great.

This is my current mileage shoe, too. This is the Nike Invincible. It's the same compound that's in the racing shoes, but it's got a much bigger coverage of rubber on the outside. So it's a lot more durable. And there's a lot more of it. See on the rear foot, how flared all that geometry is too. It's a lot safer to go slow in. And for the same reason those other shoes feel great. This thing feels like it just gives a lot back when you're jogging down the street. I'VE really enjoyed the feel of that. And if I'm, you know, being smart and walking the talk, I'll put the ghost on too. On the days that I, you know, I need a particularly safe shoe to just get out the door. Day after, you know, a bigger session or a few weeks ago, I did it. I ran some trails and it was a long portion downhill. And my quads, because I hadn't been doing it for a while, were like tree trunks the next day. Not in size, but in how rigid they were. And that shoe of the two helped me get out the door a lot more because it seemed to sort of stop me over engaging through the front as much. And yeah, so I mix it up. I mean, I've got the benefit of being able to try a lot of shoes too. I tend to cycle through them and find things that work now and then, you know, that changes too.

And that we did touch on the fact that, you know, on those slower days, those easy days, or even we call them recovery days, there is that benefit of choosing a safer, potentially heavier shoe just to force you to slow down. Because if you jump in a lighter shoe that feels amazing. You start creeping up in pace and suddenly you're doing the wrong session.

Yeah. The allure of high intensity training and it can also be influenced by how your shoes feel too. Yeah. Specific shoes for specific things, you know, depending on the outcome we want.

It's a big pet peeve of dad's is athletes telling him that they, they couldn't slow down in the, in the, in the recovery runs. And I guess, dad, your advice would be put some bricks on your feet. That's right.

Yeah. Your mileage is not going to be much help to you if all you do is go out the door and hammer down the street and you can end up in a heat pretty quickly.

The answer to that is always turn around the corner and go up the next hill. That'll slow you down every time.

Now, Mitch, thank you so much for joining us. That was a whole bunch of great information. We really appreciate you coming on and yeah, thanks for giving us Machu knowledge, which is definitely needed in the athlete world. And I've said to you a few times now, there's just such a lack of information are out there, which is why we wanted to get you on. So thank you so much for joining us.

You're most welcome. Guys, good chatting with you.

Thanks M.