Nathan’s Top Shoes of 2023, and How to Choose Shoes Based on Injury

Happy New Year runners! While we’re excited for 2024, we still have lots about 2023 to talk about with this week’s podcast. Senior Contributor Nathan Brown shares his favorite shoes of the past year (along with those that didn’t quite work out) and discusses working through an injury that’s greatly slowed his running journey as of late. Learn how he’s dealt with the injury and get a few tips on how he came to choose the best footwear for him based on his needs.

Chapters
0:00 – Intro
1:23 – Nate’s running journey in 2023
4:42 – Nate’s injury diagnosis
10:19 – Noteable daily trainers
20:37 – Noteable trail shoes
26:59 – Noteable winter-specific shoes
31:28 – Noteable racing shoes
37:02 – Learning how to find shoes that work during injury
43:44 – Life lessons learned during an up & down year
50:02 – Wrap-up

Check out our signature stability shoe guide to learn more about how we discuss footwear: https://www.doctorsofrunning.com/p/guide-to-stability-running-shoes-2021.html

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We are a group of physical therapists and runners interested in the art and science of running shoes. Learn more by visiting doctorsofrunning.com

Hello everybody and welcome to the doctors running podcast where we a group of doctors Physical Therapy discuss the Art and Science of running and the stuff that we put on our feet a few weeks ago I joked that it would be painful to have to sit through a solo episode of mine

And lo and behold today is actually that day where we’re going to run through a solo episode with me uh the rest of the team recorded their year picks for their best training shoes Racing shoes trail shoes stuff like that this year I’ve had a little bit of a unique uh

Kind of trajectory of the entire year I guess we’ll say and so my ability to contribute to a best of series was a little bit limited and I’m going to go into why that was U but I am going to talk about the shoes that I did test

Some things that I learned about myself about my feet and my preferences um and some of the shoes that kind of stuck out to me uh in the way that this year unfolded for myself so buckle up we’re in for a solo episode with me I’m Nathan

Brown uh but I am excited to share a little bit of what my story has been this year and some of the shoes that I’ve appreciated some that I enjoyed that I didn’t necessarily think I would and some others that I think uh are considerations for people with certain

Types of injuries or pain so let’s first just start with kind of what my year has been so I came into 2023 pretty healthy I had a really fun first half of the year I was able to kind of get on my feet get some training in for a f mile

Race and kind of brought myself back in into the racing scene with a local race we have it’s called The boach Run it’s a f mile out and back from the local Brewery it’s super fun a couple thousand people show up to to run it and had a

Really fun race and I’ll talk about the shoes from that later then I continued my training plan towards a 20K that I ran in Madison and that was super fun because I felt like I was finally back at it after a couple years of being a little bit

Down in terms of my fitness and my shape and I ran that race and if it were a half marathon I would have PE yard by a couple minutes um I was feeling really good and had a really uh wonderful race then I just continued running I had no

Other specific racing goals for the rest of the year I was going to do another half marathon in the fall but I did with a friend want to do a lot more trail running this year so we have the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin which is over a

Thousand miles and it kind of runs up and down the state of Wisconsin it’s a pretty neat thing so we picked a couple of the counties around us and we wanted to cover all of the distance of the Ice Age Trail in those counties so I did a

Lot more trail running this year and then at some point in mid uh July it was around the time where I went out actually for David’s wedding in California we took our whole family out there did a Disney thing it was really fun but around that time I started

Getting pain on the planner surface of my foot right under the the big toe and actually that week in California was the first week that I chose not to run at all and walking around Disney I had a lot of pain in that region and it turned

Out that uh I the pain just kept getting worse and worse if I would try to run the pain would get worse and then I noticed that the kind of the ball of my foot was about three times the size is the other side and that was my sign that

This isn’t just a little niggle this is something else that’s going on so I gave myself a full uh nine weeks off of running where I didn’t run at all and within that time I did go get an MRI and I’ll talk about that later but then I

Kind of after these nine weeks tried to get back into running a little bit and the pain wasn’t necessarily getting worse but it also wasn’t improving so I tried some graded progression loading for probably like four to six weeks and then now I’m in a period where I’ve been off of running

Again for three more weeks and I can finally say that I do think it’s actually getting better which is really cool so I’ll go into that a little bit more so big picture my year has been one where I was really excited about kind of where my running was going and my

Fitness levels and kind of some goals that I might be able to set over the next couple years and then I ran into some Road bumps that I just didn’t necessarily expect so um with that said this year uh I only tested well only it’s a funny thing I tested like 35 to

40 shoes I have them all written down I went back through my calendar and I write down all the runs and what shoes I do them in I tested 35 to 40 shoes and um I’m going to talk about those and how they fit into both my just normal

Training which ones really stuck out to me and then I’m going to also talk about which ones just didn’t work for me because of what was going on with my foot so I guess let’s start there to give you a little bit more details um I when I got

My pain that was getting worse and worse a couple of the tests that I did clinically on myself and with another PT that I had here locally we did resistance testing of the first toe to see hey does activation of the tendons on that area of the foot causing

Irritation nothing would bother it I could push as hard as I wanted through that toe none of those tendons caused pain pain we also would kind of stretch it into extension or pull the big toe back as far as we could that was a little bit painful but nothing super

Remarkable um but just a lot of it was really just pressure and I would be standing on that foot and I would get kind of it felt like there was a a ball on the bottom of the foot that was just pushing into like a very small marble

Pushing into my foot a lot of times that marble sensation is more lateral on the foot or more towards the fifth toe it’s between two and three and that’s considered a Morton’s neuroma but this didn’t line up with that it was a little bit different so one of my big concerns

Was is this a sesamoid fractur so the sesamoid is are these small floating Bones on the base of the the first toe and so that was actually what sparked me to hey let’s go get some Imaging and make sure that there’s not anything going on so I had some x-rays they were

Clear if it was a stress fracture of some kind those wouldn’t show up anyway and then I went and got the MRI and um that showed a couple of things basically if you’ve heard of the if You’ heard of turf toe that’s what I have so um it did

Show a couple things on the MRI and I’ll go into that in a second but it was the medial seso fenial ligament was torn and so that is the it’s also called the planter plate or the volar plate and it’s the one that um connects from the

Sesamoid and between the like long bone or the tarsel bone and then the first failing so it had a some tearing in there and um the other thing that was on there was some tendonopathy or tendonosis of the flexor house as longest tendon which is a tendon that

Runs through that region as well so then when you get MRI results anyone who gets MRI results you have to make sure that your clinical presentation lines up with what the MRI is showing because abnormal findings on MRIs happen all the time so just because you may get an MRI in your

Back and it says that you have a bulging dis at these certain levels or you have degenerative joint disease or degenerative dis disease that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what’s causing your symptoms it’s common for people to have abnormal symptoms in the back for example by the time we’re 50 50% of

People have degenerative joint disease with no pain so uh I think when I got those MRI results the question was what lines up with my clinical uh presentation and because of the swelling that was getting really really large and the irritability that would happen when I would bring my foot into extension

Depending on what type of shoes I would wear both me and the orthopedist that I was working with agreed that it probably was primarily this turf toe or planter plate rupture that were causing the symptoms which honestly is a really frustrating thing because when it comes

To a lot of the more common running injuries you think about Achilles tendonopathy patellar tendonopathy IT band stuff all of these different types of um injuries that have to do with a tendon or a muscle those you can do a lot for when it comes to rehab you can

Do loading exercises you can do um Progressive loading programs where something like this where it’s a ligament tear you have to protect it and give it time and if you remember back to the episode that Matt and I talked about a lot of times the healing time frame

For ligaments can be even up to six months and that’s assuming that you don’t do anything to reset the process or and and assuming that you put it in positions that allow it to go through the healing process that it needs to so I wanted to try it on that early that’s

Why my phases of running where I started with nine weeks off of running and I was both listening to my symptoms as well as um looking at that time model and thinking okay it’s been nine weeks I’m going to start giving it this Progressive loading I used on my

Treadmill I used um I have a lever system so I hooked up on that and did some running and it never hurt while I was running but I did notice that after I would go on these runs uh that were limited even to 5 minutes up to 30

Minutes I could just know noticed the next day and the day after it was just a little bit more sore and after again four to six weeks of trying to see would I continue to improve even if I try to give in some loading it just wasn’t

Ready so that’s now where I’m at with again I’m taking another long period of time I’m I’m going to take off it’s December 10th today um I’ve kind of committed to finishing the year out um resting from running um but in the meantime I’ve been doing a lot of other types of exercises

So that’s kind of the background of of what the injury was and again it’s frustrating because it’s not like I can do a lot of this loading to directly help this issue however what I have been doing is a lot of loading of my first uh so of the flexor halis longus because

There’s that tendonosis there I was like hey if it’s there I might as well treat it so I am doing a loading program for that I’ve been doing other foot intrinsic strengthening and strengthening for other parts of my arms and legs but I’ve learned a lot about

Myself when it comes to diligence and consistency with things outside of running and I’ll go into that later but let’s take a pause about my own journey of this year and let’s enter into some shoe conversations so I want to talk first about the daily trainers that

Really worked for me this year and the ones that maybe didn’t work so well for me there’s a couple that I want to highlight the first was one that I mentioned in our midyear uh kind of conversation about the best shoes for the first half and it was the Clifton 9

That was a shoe that really really worked well for me I got a lot of long run in on that shoe um and it’s as I talked about then it’s a Clifton they didn’t do anything crazy to change the geometry or anything like that but it’s

Just that new foam compound gives it a little bit extra bounce that made it really enjoyable for those easy runs but also I took this on multiple runs over 13 and 15 miles and both of those felt great it felt like they had life the

Whole time um one of them was on a on a cold really cold day really really cold day like uh like a under 10 degrees kind of a day and it felt good overall um on it was dry pavement and stuff it’s not like I was on ice or anything but it was

Just really cold and it and it held up really well there and I just liked lacing it up the only issue with it for me is despite it having a slightly wider toe box I do wish that it was even a little bit wider or I just got the wide

Version um but the Clifton 9 was still a top shoe for me given just that new foam compound and overall just smooth Transitions and it did well both at the easy paces and when I wanted to pick it up a little bit another shoe that came

Out this year that did work for me really well um and it was actually a shoe I was testing around the time when I started to get some pain very unrelated but um was the canara pro um very different than the the Clifton because of how stiff it is because of

The plate obviously a very high stack you have the layer of PB on the top layer of power run on the bottom but what worked for me is the level of aggressiveness of The Rocker was gradual enough for me to just get into a long run Rhythm so this was just a floater

Shoe for me I could put it on and I could just pound miles out and it felt really really good it uh the the plate design and the stiffness of the forefoot actually worked really well for the injury I had because again that plate on

The bottom of the foot uh prevent is is put on stretch when you extend the toe so when I start to talk about some of the shoes that worked well for me in that phase um I’ll explain that tow spring and flexibility of the 4 foot weren’t

Ideal for running um and so that’s why this was actually a really good option the only issue is that I was also really sensitive to how tight uh a the beginning part of a toe box was and so the canara pro despite having some room

Was still a little bit more of a stiff upper it doesn’t have a super amount of give and it was just a little bit too snug and so when I would get that compression it just caused irritation to my foot so this could have been a great

Option for me moving forward as I was as as I’m coming back from running but it’s just a little bit too snug uh to to pull that off another trainer that I wanted to touch on was actually the cumulus um 25 from as6 huge update to the cumulus

Not really recognizable in a lot of ways to the old models they really did a lot with the geometry and the flaring of the sole the shaping and the sculpting of it they really gave it an upgrade and this was one shoe that just didn’t work for

Me this year I like the direction that they’re going they want to give it a little bit more life but I think that the posterior flare and the lateral flare combined on this shoe was just too much they put a lot of width here to add they want to add some structure and

Stability to these training shoes but because of the flaring and the lack of bevel that that didn’t take it out of the way I felt like I got a lot of motion medial and laterally on my foot because of where I land I land a little

Bit further back which puts a little bit more landing on that posterior lateral side and because of that flaring there’s more of a moment around the ankle so I just never was able to find a rhythm it felt clunky through the heel and I think that it’s one that I’m excited to see

What how they refine it because they have been good at making changes quickly um I should say they’ve been good at that in the last you know five years or so right after they revamped everything so I’m excited to see where they go but this was just a shoe that I think if

You’re a cumulus person and you want to keep going with the cumulus line I would kind of wait to see the next advancements and what they do with kind of the 26 and where they go from there another shoe that I wanted to point out that I really enjoyed um was the cloud

Surfer from on this was the first shoe that they came out with their kind of new phased uh pod design and it really just softened up the ride a ton um I’m not necessarily a huge fan of so like super soft shoes but this one was really

Enjoyable to run in for those easy runs um and it does feel light enough and had a really comfortable and wide wide four foot upper so this is one if you’re thinking about trying on you kind of have to to decide what life of on do I want to go into do I

Want to go into their traditional models which case you could look at something like the cloud monster um or the cloud flow they have kind of their more typical design of the of these clouds or do you want their really soft experience then I’d come here and they also had the

Cloud Eclipse which I have not tested yet um but I think this is a really fun shoe from on that the geometry works really well it’s really soft a little bit of a pop to it and it’s held up pretty well uh from the miles that I put

On it all right the last shoe give me a second I dropped it so I have to get it the last shoe that I wanted to talk about is the Nova blast 4 so I did put out a comparison video on this shoe the Nova Blast 3 was my favorite trainer of

2020 uh 2022 and I only have full disclosure I only have like two two runs in this shoe but from what I ran in it I have really enjoyed it I can pretty much guarantee that once I’m up and running again this would be a shoe that I would reach for

It does have a little bit more stiffness in the forefoot than the previous version um I put both of them on but that could be because I have multiple hundred miles obviously on my other one which can change how flexible it is so it just feels a little bit um more

Stable again through the heel um they did w it seemed like they widen the base a little bit and it just um it just is another another um Nova blast and I’ve been really enjoying those even since version two but version three was my favorite and um I just love how how

Cushioned the forefoot feels with the grooves that they cut out and kind of this P crash pad that they put in the forefoot so those are a couple trainers that stuck out to me this year uh another one that I wish worked better for me was the Invincible from Nike

Cushioning was fantastic I did a lot of really great workouts long run workouts in that shoe leading up to my 20K but the only issue was that um the he heel Construction in the hold was pretty wretched so it was so loose that rocks from I run on the green circle Trail

Around Steven’s Point which is a granite crushed granite Trail and rocks would even be able to slide into my shoe that’s how loose it was it would just slide around underfoot feel was awesome lot of great things about having that mod mode of zox underneath it just

Didn’t work from a uh from a fit perspective now contrast that with testing the Vero 17 that was a really nice daily trainer was my first Vero that I’ve ran in but it had dual density midsole you had some zoomx on the top and the fit was just way better

Definitely more of like a comfortable cruising kind of daily trainer uh but I I would hope that they can take some of the construction of the heel fit on that shoe or pretty much any of their shoes and put it into the Invincible I think

That it would make it a shoe that I would reach for um all the time the one thing that other thing I would notice about the the Invincible is that the upper minimizes stretch as well the Vero is more that comfortable Cruiser has a little bit of a flexible upper the

Invincible has more a rigid upper that tries to lock everything down they just failed in the heel to make it work but in the foref foot it’s that little bit lower volume it’s going to lock the foot in so it doesn’t have a lot of stretch

And with the way again that my foot has been working with me I’m curious to see if that lack of flexibility would cause me issues but I hadn’t been testing that at the time uh when my foot started to bother me let’s see I think the other

Shoe that I did want to give a little bit of a shout out to was the Topo Phantom 3 that there is from from a boring shoe stampo this is kind of like epitomizes it but I never think that boring is bad it has a good amount of

Cushion underneath it has a little bit of a drop and it has a nice wide toe box and transitions fine front to back really great for standing and walking around at work uh the colorway just wasn’t conducive the one that I got for wearing it at work all the time U but

Super comfortable for walking really comfortable for easy runs I wouldn’t take it out anything fast but it it could Cruise really really nicely um and then let’s move on to some of the trail stuff that that I that I oh no I did want to say one other thing

What I noticed about my experience with daily trainers this year even before my injury started the thing that would turn me off the most the thing that was the most consistent issue was upper fit so um I talked about the Invincible um even some of the ways that the then I talked

About the canara pro there were a lot of things with these uppers that they were just a little bit too snug in the forefoot didn’t hold the heel down well and I think I learned this year how much I value a good fit in a shoe making sure

That it’s something that I’m not going to have to worry about at all when I go out and run um that’s why I did really like the cloud Surfer because that fit is really comfortable good amount of cushioning in the heel um but not too much cushioning in the heel or it got

Sloppy and then the forfoot had enough room to let the foot kind of breathe so really really good fit there another shoe with good fit that I appreciated and I’ll talk about this shoe when I talk about ones that worked for me with my injury is the S Triumph rfg that’s

That’s run for good this is their sustainable model this upper is kind of like that more true sock likee upper where it’s more of a cloth material and it has a good amount of flexibility to it I really like how comfortable that 4f foot is and adapting to the foot and

They still did a nice job getting the heel to lock in really well so for me fit really really matters and I’ll talk about it again further when I talk about shoes that did and didn’t work for me specifically so I said that I got to try

Out a bit more Trail life this year on the Ice Age Trail Ice Age Trail is like a single track hiking trail it’s one that some people will like through hike and do the whole the whole deal obviously I went out with my friend to do just segments of it throughout the

Year and it was super fun so a couple of shoes that I tested did the speed goat Exodus Ultra 2 from s Brooks Catamount 2 Solomon Ultra Glide 2 Topo Terra Venture 4 endorphin Rift and the ultrafly from Nike so the shoes that really stuck out

To me were the um Solomon Ultra Glide 2 the speed goat and the rift those were the three where if I was going to be in the market for buying a shoe for the trails those would be the three that I’d go to and I’ll kind of talk through why

So speaking of fit I had to get the wide version for the speed goat um I know this shoe is not the newest or not the most uh you know didn’t just drop or anything like that but the consistency of the speed goat has uh not too deep of

Lugs they’re probably four millimeters or so somebody can correct me if I’m wrong um but has a a nice lug pattern really grippy in all directions but not too high where if you’re on pavement you could get away with it for a little while which is nice for the Ice Age

Trail because they’re are connector segments so I found this to be a really comfortable Cruiser to be able to go from the trail to the road for short distances I wouldn’t just take this on road runs and then back um onto the trail um I also really loved the shoe in

The winter um I found that the upper was warm enough um this is not the gortex version this is just the regular version but it was warm enough where I could just have my typical socks and wear this shoe and get get by just fine and then

The traction that was added from the outo was great for going onto a little bit of snowy kind of snow covered roads and big big fan of the speed goat 5 uh pretty simple and smooth The Rocker just kind of rolls you through but it isn’t aggressive in the same way um that’s

Part of why I loved the um Ultra Glide 2 from Solomon and this would I still think this was my favorite Trail shoe from 2023 um pretty similar in terms of the depth of the lugs on the out soole little bit less aggressive and even more

Smooth on the roads I took this on over a 15 mile on the roads uh it was a really snowy day so I did have some something on the ground but I was on the roads and I had over 15 miles in this shoe and it it worked fantastic both for

Grip um it w it didn’t despite it being a cloth upper it didn’t hold water too bad it was a very slushy day and I just really appreciated it took this on multiple 10 plus Mile Trail runs and just the type of rocker you can just see

It’s very gradual goes from heel to for foot there isn’t like a flat surface in the back it’s completely rockered from front to back and it just worked so well um traversing the trails flexible enough to adapt to the some of the surfaces excuse me flexible enough to adapt to

Some of the surfaces on the trail but uh not so flexible that it didn’t give you a little bit of guidance so I just feel like Glide is a good word for this shoe it just moved really well um and and I appreciated it both on the road when I

Was doing kind of snowy runs but also when I took it out this summer um in the spring on those Trails single track track Trails there was a lot of mud some of those days it just worked really really well and it was my my top shoe of

The year for trail but the other one that I did want to talk about that I think I had the most fun running in was the Endorphin Rift so a couple years ago tested the Endorphin Edge it’s got a plate in it it has the power on PB it’s

A it’s a higher stack shoe they came out with the rift uh that is a little bit lower stack but still has that power on PB but it’s a little bit more flexible as well so it felt way more Nimble and I enjoyed it more and I felt more safe

Running in this shoe than I did the Endorphin Edge on the Trails um and just really liked the underfoot feel you can see the lugs are a little bit deeper a little bit more aggressive than the other shoes that I talked about so I really like this more for Pure trail

Running um and but I really thought that the underfoot feel was really fun but it wasn’t too much um too much foam whereas in the edge sometimes I felt like it was so high that I could roll an ankle um I did not feel that at all in the in the

Rift the only thing about the rift that I didn’t like back to my Mantra of the year is the upper has I think some work to do they have a pretty they have a really stiff heel counter in here um and not a lot of pading they also have a

Very rigid kind of collar around the neck or like the throat of the shoe and so that was a little bit uncomfortable I sometimes would feel it on the runs especially this heel part would kind of dig in um I think that this could be very well refined they also have this

Lacing system where it’s kind kind of a booty construction which is fine and good but this uh lacing portion for the more proximal part of the lace is made of a pretty dense plastic and I could feel that a little bit in my foot so if

They could refine kind of this back half of the upper this would probably or I it would have the chance to take over my top Trail shoe um but just as it is the ultra Glide is the one that I could use for hiking and I could use for going out

For some runs and so that’s why I like to choose this is just the versatility there all right um the other shoe that I did want to mention uh and I it’s it’s from that to it’s from toppo and it was the terraventure 4 and I would call it

The like the Lone Peak of toppo so the Lone Peak for Ultra is like this through hiking shoe really flexible um kind of minimalized a lot of the stuff around the upper Terra Venture is pretty much similar in that little bit more of a construction to heal and it does have a

4mm drop or 3mm drop but I did it like 15 miles in that or 14 miles one day in that shoe and I just loved having the nimbleness of that shoe not Nimble in a fast way but Nimble in a flexibility and just morphing to the trail while having

Enough protection underneath so that was a fun shoe that was a fun shoe to get some running in it was a day that we were crewing for a friend who was doing a 50 mile and that was my shoe that I would go out and do all my running in

And ends up being a lot when you’re crewing so that was super fun all right the two more categories one of them is winter um and I did want to talk about that a little bit so I have mentioned a couple shoes that I ran in the winter in

Like the ultra Glide and the um Hoka speed goat so what I like about those is the grip that you get for kind of going overground I actually was they were actually planning to send me the speed goat Spike which has little metal ridges

But they tried to send it to me and it ended up in this pair and I’m actually super glad one of my issues that I have with either yak tracks or spikes or whatever is you have to make sure that you’re on somewhere that has snow or ice

Or something like that because if you don’t it actually gets more slippery when you’re on pavement um and just really loud and uncomfortable so I actually like to keep some rubber on the ground instead of having something that is metal um That Could That Could poke

In so I did talk about those shoes but two other ones that I wanted to mention that were interesting to test one of them I would never buy full full transparency but um it’s the LA sportiva Shoe um it’s the Cyclone cross GTX so you can see how decked out this

Thing is in um snow and winter Readiness it looks like a cross country ski boot but you have this kind of you have a boa lacing you have this lace up Gator that’s attached to the shoe it’s a pretty slick design some things that I

Had a hard time with with this shoe were the price over $200 for a shoe that you’re not going to get that that much use out of unless you are doing this for a very specific purpose I guess it could get a lot of use um the other thing was

How tight the upper was and how tight and narrow the toe box was again this was something that could I think that could be opened up quite a bit because it’s not like you’re trying to rip speed in this thing um or at least I wasn’t I

Was going to use this if I was going to go in deep snow I did do that one day and it was awesome because it was like six inches of powder and I could just run straight through it but it just wasn’t um I just just don’t think it had

Anything super unique or special that made me want to choose this over my speed goat um and the you can see the outsole construction on this shoe you can get that in a lot of other um trail shoes it’s a little bit more aggressive a little bit deeper and they’re a little

Bit more spread out to make it more like a like nature but I didn’t necessarily think that it gave me any more grip um but it is a really cool construction and I did like this foam is super firm but if when I’m running on snow in the winter in the middle of

Winter I don’t like something that’s overly cushioned and overly um soft because that is a recipe for like super soft foam on top of soft snow you just get lost and you don’t really know where your foot is in space and I usually pretty sore after Those runs so I did

Like that this was firmer but that again minimized my utility to those times where there would be a lot of snow on the ground last shoe that I wanted to talk about is mainly for the upper and it’s like if they could just make make some tweak to the outso this could be

Like the best shoe for for winter all around but it’s the Endorphin Speed 3 this was the Run Shield so again this is an older shoe but I do think when we think about winter running I think it should still be in the conversation two

Things I love about the shoe is the um runshield upper is super warm it’s not waterproof but it’s water resistant keeps the wind away so on those really cold biting days it’s really great to have an upper like this because it’s just it keeps your foot from from

Feeling like it’s going to fall off so big fan of the Run Shield upper I think they do a fantastic job with it and they did open it up enough where even though that the upper is a little thicker it didn’t feel like it’s constricting down

On the foot the second thing that I really enjoyed is that because it is power on PB it felt like the foam was a little bit more resistant to the Colder Weather so those Evas can firm up quite a bit when you get outside and even if

You’re out there for a long time it felt like this just maintained its pop now because of the outsole which is the same as far as I know as their typical models it didn’t do anything for me if there was any snow or anything like that but

If it was just a cold day but the roads were cleared and there had been enough like sublimation from the Sun this was a shoe that I would love to put on in the winter Top Choice um and even more than their other models uh that are run

Shield and that’s because of the power on PB I just like that that foam keeps its its life and it keeps its bounciness more so than some of the Evas that are out there so had to give that shoe a shout out as well all right the final

Category before I get into shoes that works for me with my injury is race day so I ran as I mentioned I ran two races did my five mile race in March and then in May I did my 20K and I think that it’s it’s there they are they’re down

There it’s easy to hypothesize about shoes that would work for me and wouldn’t work for me and I feel like the most Telltale thing is what do you actually lace up with um and so I laced up with two different shoes for that RAC those races but I also tried a bunch of

Shoes during the training cycle so for that femer I was able to do some testing in the uh femer and for the 20K in the Hoka rocket X2 I tested that out I got to test out the alphafly 2 um and then I tested out the Endorphin Elite endorphin

Pro 3 um and I tested out the New Balance oh my gosh SC Elite this is why I need my my my people here to keep me on track here um SC Elite V3 tested even the super blast in consideration for some of these races for me uh and yeah I

There were some that definitely didn’t work for me I guess I’ll put it that way don’t know if they would have worked for me if I put them on a metabolic cart maybe I would have been surprised but shoes that didn’t work for me and I’ve talked about this in other podcast but

Were the uh Hoka rocket X2 I just felt like I was having to climb out and I couldn’t get into a nice rhythm in that shoe I did some really nice progression workouts or kind of when I say nice they were fun they were fun progression workouts but I just couldn’t get into

Rhythm really at any Pace until I was lower than my 5K or like faster than my 5K Pace because then I was really uh not so much back on my heel but kind of up towards my forfoot and besides that I couldn’t get into a good Rhythm so that

Shoe just didn’t work for me and the other one that just didn’t work for me was actually the alphafly 2 it was super comfortable um but it just was so clunky for me in that transition from the heel to foref foot I like the amount of cushioning the width of the forefoot

Felt really nice but I do think I’m excited I just got the alphafly 3 uh shipped to me like last week but I haven’t ran in yet I’m excited to see if I enjoy the alphafly unit with a connected midsole to see if that changes that transition from heel to forefoot um

Because I did like the amount of cushioning and the width that was going on there so those were some that that didn’t so much work for me ones that did work for me quite a bit were the SC Elite version 3 um and when I say it

Worked for me in that sense it was very comfortable and worked super well with my mechanics even though it was a softer shoe which again I typically don’t gravitate towards the transition from heel to 4f foot and through felt so smooth and I didn’t feel any hitches in

The entire thing and I would take this on actually enjoyed it more for like easier portions of the runs and that was when I decided I wasn’t going to work take it for the races because I would go do my workout and I would enjoy the

Warmup and the cool down more than I did the effort so I really like how it worked with me for running in general but not so much for the workouts so with the new version version four coming out which we have not seen or tested but we have heard they’re changing the midsole

I’m excited to see what their kind of geometric design and their ability to play with midsoles does um when you have a phone that might have a little bit more life to it um so that one worked for me in one sense but not enough to

Pull it out on race day the one that I brought with me I guess maybe I don’t have it next to me that’s okay um the the shoe that I ended up wearing for the five mile race was the sakon Endorphin Pro 3 I tested that and the elite and

The elite the late stage rocker was just too late for me whereas the the um endorphin Pro 3 has a little bit more of a gradual rocker it’s still aggressive but not but it starts a little bit earlier and it allows you to just roll through to the for foot a little bit

Easier even at slightly slower paces and so I took that shoe out for the five miles I anticipated kind of holding myself back but classic running circumstance where you get to the line and you can’t slow yourself down um I had a really great race in that shoe it

Felt smooth the whole time I felt like I was in Rhythm and would have no problem taking that any further but for the 20K I used a different shoe and that was the vaporfly um next percent three and I absolutely loved my race in that shoe super streamlined it felt like nothing

Is wasted in that shoe in terms of midsole width or geometry or extra foam or extra upper it just felt like they did a really nice job sculpting the shoe and I I had again I had a PR race which it’s easy to love a shoe when you have a

Good race day even though the shoe wasn’t what made the race day um but I really enjoyed kind of my my race in that shoe I’d pick it again and uh it was awesome I would have to test out some other some other Racing shoes

To like try out the alphafly 3 see if it would usurp it for a race in the future but as of now that’s that’s kind of my go to racing shoe for longer distances at least up to the half marathon I think I’d have a different conversation if I

Was running a marathon and it would depend on what kind of shape I’m in but because I was in such good shape in May um and was feeling healthy and good it was easy to lace that shoe up and it just felt so light on foot in comparison

To some of the other shoes that I had been testing and just really enjoyed getting getting turnover in that shoe I do it again it was really nice okay so I wanted to talk about a few shoes that worked well for me and a couple tips that I learned along the way

Um when it came to the injury that I had so remember it was a planner plate rupture so anything that would bring me into a lot of extension would cause irritation um and then anything that just lead to compression would would irritate that region so let’s start with the good start with

The good stuff um there was a couple of shoes that as I was returning to running for that period that really really worked well for me some of them made more sense to me than others um but the first one that that worked really really well was actually funny enough the on

Cloud boom Echo 3 I was not doing anything fast at all um but what this shoe had going for was a very I went down into by the shoe wall and I picked up every shoe and I tried to bend everyone I was like I want the shoe with

The stiffest 4-foot rocker so that was my first thing because I didn’t want my foot to move into extension so picked up the cloud boom EP Echo that one was super stiff in comparison to the other ones so that was on the docket as an

Option I also grabbed I have the um AI zero Prime X2 and that’s even more stiff than this shoe so that was another one that was I was thinking about trying out so I just grabbed all these stiff rocker shoes uh because I wanted to avoid

Extension of the toe but what it came down to was which shoe had the The Rocker but didn’t have the toes spring and also didn’t um compress my foot too much so uh the the prime X2 from Adidas way too snug in the forefoot for me at

That time and the foam underneath was just a little bit firmer which means that it was pushing up into that swelling that I had and just causing irritation another shoe that I tried that just didn’t work it was close to working the St the cushion and the

Softness of the foam was nice it allowed kind of that swelling that I had to push into it but if you can see this is the um P um sorry what is this called wow this is there we go um SC Trainer that’s it too many shoes the SC

Trainer V2 really nice foam compound that allowed my foot to sink into it but if you can see look how much tow spring there was so my foot was just always held an extension and it’s just a little bit more flexible than some of the other

Ones so it’s being held in extension and pushed into extension and it just didn’t work for me combined with a little bit more of a narrow 4f foot I’ve noticed about that about this shoe over the last um this version and then uh actually the

Rebel V3 just a little bit snug in the 4 foot for me it just didn’t work and the SC Trail was the same too so the tow spring just didn’t work for me on that shoe um but the other shoe that worked really well for me during this time was

Not the SC Trainer but the SC Elite um a little bit in little bit more gradual you can see of The Rocker and less of a of a tow spring than there was in the SC Trainer funny enough and so this shoe worked pretty well except it was just a little bit more

Flexible so that’s why I ended up gravitating towards the cloud boom Echo because it had a similar kind of fit and feel from a comfort standpoint on the foot but it was just a little bit stiffer in the cloud boom Echo and that’s what I would lean

Towards what was more important than the shoes that I ran in were the shoes that I walked in and the shoe that I have spent more time in than any other shoe this year is the toppo Traverse so this is a kind of a through hiking shoe that

They came out with it’s not specifically made for running though I have ran in it and it feels nice for just kind of some easy runs on the trails but I really appreciated going back to what felt good having the space in the forefoot didn’t compress my foot and the type of

Cushioning and amount of cushioning just allowed my foot to sit in the footed without getting any pressure um there’s some flexibility in the forefoot there’s no plate but with my walking around and stuff it has enough stiffness that it didn’t push me into a lot of

Extension uh and and it’s been the most comfortable shoe and I’ve worn it to work pretty much every single day um during this period of time that I’ve been injured the other shoe that I have used during the day is come bringing this shoe back out is the um soy Triumph

Run for good the reason that I used this shoe is because I had multiple pairs of previous triumphs and I actually and I don’t have the one with me that I used but I would take the insoles out oh that’s gross look at that that’s disgusting looking out my dirt um but

What I did is I created a cutout around my first MTP which allowed the swelling that I had to sit there without getting pressure so I basically offloaded that part of the shoe and I did that for over a month right I was wearing only the shoes that I could create cutouts and

Offload the shoe so if you’re in a spot where you need to um create some offloading to a painful area of the foot I recommend getting uh an old pair that you have taking out the insole and creating a cut in the region of the of the area of discomfort and pain so

Thankful for those couple shoes that got me through um and are getting me through this time I’m still wearing that that Traverse every single day just from the level of comfort that it’s giving me um and those are the shoes that I’ve thought about for 2023 obviously I did not get to test

Most of the shoes that came through our doors in the second half of the year which is a bummer because that’s a really fun part obviously of being a part of doctors of running uh but I I did want to share kind of some of my

Experiences and the shoes that I did get to test and kind of why they may have worked for me based off of the injury that I’m currently walking through also uh I didn’t even say this but I think that the question of how did this how

Did I get a planner plate rupture I think is an interesting one because typically planner plate ruptures happen in like football players um or some kind of level one sport athlete where you have a very rapid and fast extension of the first toe maybe you’re like changing directions going from backward to

Forward and your foot’s in extension your toes in extension then it kind of ruptures I don’t think I had anything like that unless it happened when I was coaching Henry’s soccer team or if it happened uh when I was running on the trail and maybe I hit like a I was maybe

Climbing a hill and I hit a route and it just pushed my toe back but I never had like a moment where I felt it so it is possible that it was just this chronic um kind of wear down of that um of that ligament and then it just kind of

Reached its failing point and I’m just letting it recover so I don’t exactly again know why it happened um part of me wishes and hopes that it was kind of that there was an incident that happened because then it’s not having to do with kind of my training volumes and having

To rethink that but obviously that’s all part of kind of recalibrating as I think about jumping back into running okay the last thing that um I wanted to talk about was just a couple of things that I learned about myself uh in this past year when it comes to

Running and my relationship with running and that kind of thing because when you if you’ve gone through any sort of injury there’s so much more than the physical part of it there’s a lot of the mental part and relational part and all these different things that um interact

With maybe why you run in the first place and so I just wanted to share a couple of things that I learned about myself and I’m thankful that a lot of these are pretty positive overall um and then a couple things that I kind of expected to have happened and that did

So the first thing I learned that I have always said that my favorite part of running uh are the friendships that I make in the community that I have in running and it’s kind of encouraging to see that that’s true um I have people come over every single Thursday to our

House and I’m just like some friends and we run from our house and we sit and we drink coffee well they drink coffee I drink chocolate milk um I just my stomach doesn’t do well with coffee uh but uh every single Thursday we get together and we run and we do that and

Even though I hadn’t been running for like 15 weeks out of this year they’ve still come to our come to our house sometimes I would bike with them but now that it’s so cold I just wait for him inside I’ll welcome them in we chat we

Drink coffee and I just I’m so thankful for the running friends that I have and that I’m still able to be in relationship with them even though I’m not out there running with them but I have noticed that’s the flip side where one of my easy ways to connect with

People is to go on a run with them and you chat and I just love when you’re with somebody and you’re running there’s it’s easier to talk about stuff because you’re not looking face to face you’re kind of distracted by whatever’s going on around you and it just feels like you

Can open up about life and all the stuff going on so I have missed some of that my ability to connect with people um in that way but I am thankful for the running friendships that I have and that those have been able to continue um because they’re still willing to kind of

Come over and do their thing while I’m waiting for them to come back so running Community really is is what I love about the sport and it’s still the thing that I love about the sport and the activity so really really fun I also learned um

That I’ve always I I did a a project as part of my doctoral studies that I’m doing right now for my educational doctorate and it was about running identity and how um health habits inform things like our identity and How Deeply that that can impact our day-to-day life

So I had always thought I was a pretty healthy had a pretty healthy relationship with running and I’m thankful to say that even though running kind of got taken away from me for 15 or so weeks that I have been like good on like a base level inside I have been

Able to still have like joy and happiness and all that stuff and I found other ways to um spend my time um because I did run a good number of hours a week um still find other ways to be somewhat active other ways to connect with people I just was thankful to find

That that wasn’t a Lynch pin in my life that was like keeping me afloat um which I think is a healthy spot to be so I was thankful to to find that out too I also have found that I maybe am more patient when it comes to recovery than I thought

I would be or than I have been in the past because sometimes when I’ve had smaller niggles I start to like oh no if this gets really bad maybe this is going to derail me a little bit I’m going to be really frustrated because it’s going

To do X Y and Z to my fitness or whatever and I’ve been I’ve been pretty pretty thankful that um I’ve I felt pretty patient like even in this phase of trying to come back to running and now being off for three three weeks and thinking I’ll be off for three more or

So um I I have been in a good patient spot knowing that the healing time frame exists kind of listening to the PT side of myself which is kind of rare for me um saying hey this could take up to six months to actually heal give it the time

That it needs do the other things that you can can in the meantime to keep moving and have fun and be with people um but I’ve also been able to listen to kind of some of the advice that I would give a patient where if they were trying

To either rest from it protect it with different taping techniques and all this stuff also doing some loading to the tendons around the area just to keep the foot strong since I’m not using it in the same way so I have learned that I’m a little bit more patient than I thought

I um than I thought I may have been when I would actually get into this situation the final thing I learned about myself is that I love running and I don’t love pretty much anything else I did a lot of biking for a while brutal never enjoyed

It not once but part of it because I biked Alone um the second thing that I still don’t Love Is Lifting but again I was doing it alone and it’s just really really hard for me to get motivated swimming swimming’s fun I did enjoy swimming however I didn’t

Like waking up extra early having to go into a pool where it’s like dark it was dark outside and it’s cold outside and then you got to go into a cold pool swim laps shower it just was so time consuming so there’s just all these different forms of exercise I learned I

Don’t like any of them as much as I love running so still thankful for running excited to get back into the swing of it whenever that happens hopefully in the next you know month or so but um learning learning a lot about myself learning that uh accessibility to

Exercise is a key thing it’s so much harder for me to get to the waight room because I have to I can’t just put on shoes and run out the door and go run you have to I have to drive to a gym um

I have to get inside that gym and then I have to shower after because I’m or go home and shower so accessibility really matters and um I can see where that can lead to difficulty with consistency for a lot of people and I know for sure it

Has been for me when it comes to lifting um and then just I again I haven’t tried any of those activities with people and I think that if I did maybe I would learn a lot about myself or that was just a weird phrase what I would say is maybe I would be

More consistent with the things that I didn’t like if I was doing them with people so maybe that would be something worth trying it’s just harder to coordinate harder to coordinate okay um I think that’s everything that I wanted to talk about today I babbled for probably way

Longer than you have wanted to listen to me talk about but there’s my thoughts on 2023 the shoes that I got to test which ones worked well for me which ones I am excited to see progressions of in the future and uh also some of my journey walking through a ligament spraying in

My foot and for anyone else who’s going through a longer standing injury we’re going to get there we’re going to heal um we’re going to do the things we have to to get back and it’ll be fun to to see what’s on the other side but hope

Everybody has a great night great day or whenever you’re listening to this