Nice Rubbers

Since a couple of year's ago, Runner's World Magazine has been having what they call the Shoe Summit where the Editors of the publication around the world meet up with the shoe manufacturers to get updates on the latest and coolest shoes that are in the pipeline. They also vote for the shoe of the year, which was won by the 2006 Nike Pegasus (last year's award went to asics 2100). What I like about the magazine is that they have been adding more and more multimedia content into their website. Most notable were their New York and Fall marathon podcasts (which I've downloaded and will add to my online collection - I shall publish it here when I've completed the migration) and now, the coverage of the said Shoe Summit. There were altogether 9 short videos of the featured shoes but I choose to only feature 8 here as the 9th is a women's only shoe from Reebok - the Premier Hatana. Nothing against the fairer sex but I thought I can easily and quickly do a 2x4 collage of the images here for those who hasn't downloaded the excellent videos. In my opinion all runners should be more informed about their running footwear. Not only are they spending huge sums of cash on them, they rely on the gear to protect them. What appeals to me, besides the cosmetics and design (naturally), are the technology that goes into each of them. Sometimes they're derivative of each other and just called by another name (blame it on the marketers!) and some don't actually work but it shows that some thinking power actually went into that piece of fabric/rubber/plastic combo we lace up each time we head outdoors. Enjoy the pictures. Oh yeah, if you want to download the videos, hit this link.


As you can see there are quite a bit of focus on performance trainers for the coming spring collection. Nearly all models have new technologies embedded in them. It's going to be an interesting year.