Most runners are not so much stubborn, but they do have their preferences. And they differ per runner. Do you like a shoe with a lot of cushioning or do you prefer to strap rockets? For each his own!
As many people as there are running, there are as many types of runners. And also so many wishes that connect those runners to running. Relax or escape, perform or meditate, as meditation or as medication. Everything is possible, everything is allowed. What makes us all runners is that we regularly move on foot and at some speed over the roads and paths.
Find Your Run
With that philosophy in mind, the American running brand Brooks wants to serve the runner: Find Your Run. Brooks presented their vision of what the runner would like to a group of running media in London, based on a number of new versions of existing series. Prior to that, Brooks’ Vice President and Head of Footwear Development Carson Caprara had flown in. This is how we know that the starting point for the future of the brand is; keep it simple. Focus on a number of product lines and don’t always come up with a completely new concept.
Leading in that idea is what the runner likes, not what a brand thinks a certain type of runner should wear. Which types of shoes are appreciated and have proven themselves over the years, such as the popular Glycerin line. In London, three other ‘bangers’ from the Brooks catalog were put in the spotlight. The Ghost 15, Levitate 6 and the latest addition to the successful and acclaimed Hyperion series, the Hyperion Max. When we talk about Find Your Run, these three models represent respectively: find your cushy place, find your springboard and find your lightspeed.
Not words, but meters
You can talk about shoes until you cross your eyes and it’s certainly interesting to hear about the idea behind the design of a shoe, but it really gets fun when right after that story you can put on the shoe in question and take it for a while run on. So the Brooks people had set up a few treadmills and three models of shoes in a wide selection of sizes. We could immediately feel whether the Ghost indeed ran nice and soft, whether the Levitate really felt like a springboard and whether that Hyperion, as promised, let you go like a rocket.
The favourites
On the Ghost 15, we from the ProRun editors walked a sloppy 19 kilometers through London at a leisurely pace. That was excellent. Nice cushioning, but still a light feeling. The Levitate 6 was not for us; we found it to feel a bit heavy, but that could also be because we tried it right after the Hyperion Max. And well, it lived up to Lightspeed’s promise. A shoe that feels fast as soon as you put it on. Because the sole is made of a very light foam (nitrogen-infused DNA Flash), you have good cushioning, but not as thick as you find under most supershoes. The Hyperion Max therefore feels more stable than carbon shoes generally feel. I would put it on for interval training, but it would also be fine for a long run. Not too slow, by the way, that would almost be a shame.
It’s a nice thought; Find Your Run. We wholeheartedly agree, go out your way and walk.