Sunday, April 29, 2007

Nike Free - Not faster, just funnier looking

"Does color matter to you?" the clerk asked over his shoulder as he led me through the clearance section. "Nope" I enthusiastically replied. "Good" he said with just a bit too much confidence.

And so it was that I walked out of the Nike Outlet with a pair of bright yellow Nike Free shoes for the rock bottom price of $29.99.

The Nike Free shoe is classic Nike marketing. For the low low price of $90.00 (when not in the clearance bin) you can have the benefits and value of running, get this, barefoot. In other words, Nike will sell you something to loosely approximate something you already own - your feet. And they say selling bottled water takes chutzpah.

So I took the shoes home and Googled them (note to reader: this is backwards. The reason we have mobile access to the Internet is to Google first, *then* buy). The shoe actually get good reviews by runners (and even a mention CoolTools). Though they also get a strong warning: train up slowly to using them, or suffer serious injury. No pressure.

And that's what I've been doing: phasing these new shoes into my running. I started with wearing them around the house and have worked up to my usual 45 minute runs in them.

For walking they have been really comfortable. For my first run, they were wickedly uncomfortable - causing me a pair of matching blisters on each foot.

However, in the end, I buy into the benefits of these shoes and just love their pure simplicity. No doubt, I will put up them for a bit longer before I declare them a dud.

So,if you see some guy running/hobbling down the street in bright yellow shoes, that would be me. Please don't stop and ask me if I want a ride - I might just take you up on it.

Update: I tried to crop the photo to show as little of my legs as possible. Yuck, they just aren't appealing. On a good note, I really do love wiredness, a super simple way to edit photos.

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