Sunday Long Run: Why You Need a Boring Shoe

Being on the cutting edge of technology is fun, especially when it comes to running shoes. There are many shoes out there that you can literally put on your feet and you become magically faster by a noticeable margin, at all effort levels (which is the scariest part).

I’m not only talking about racing shoes either, there are “super trainers” available now that would blow away racing shoes from 10 years ago. Well known examples of these are Saucony Endorphin Speeds, New Balance Rebels, and the not-so-sneakily named NB SuperComp Trainer—to name a few.

While these are all GREAT shoes, and I mean seriously great, they can invite paces on normal training runs when you do not *need* it. Problems occur due to the fact that there is almost no ceiling to how fast your splits will start getting before you feel different.

For example, here is a client of mine running in a “super trainer” shoe. This was meant to be a dedicated zone 1-2 run, but the shoe invited pace he wasn’t ready for. With this pace came an elevated HR. Downstream affect of this is needing extra recovery! Using these shoes on a daily basis before you’re ready can actually regress you in the long term.

This same client after putting on a boring daily-training shoe:

The second picture is much more manageable to repeat on a daily basis, which means this person can start stringing higher volume together week-over-week! Notice the boring shoe doesn’t force pace and the runner can naturally increase his pace by a few seconds at no extra cost (HR). Slight increasing pace + steady HR = Good training.

On Heart Rate

Another point I want to highlight in the above section is the disparity in heart rate & cardiac drift.

Cardiovascular drift, also known as cardiac drift, is a gradual increase in heart rate and a decrease in stroke volume that occurs after about 10 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise in a warm or neutral environment.

The longer a workout goes, especially above LT1, the higher your heart rate will average to produce the same amount of work.

In the second picture, this individual is simply running in zone 1. If you notice the heart rate difference from his second mile to his last mile, there is only a difference in 2 BPM. Even when looking from the 3rd mile, the 5th mile is 17 seconds faster at the same heart rate. (We ignore mile #1 in heart rate drift because it is always lower—the first half mile will also be in a “warmup” zone.)

This essentially means there is *no* drift! This pace could held for hours and the heart rate would barely move up.

On the flip side, taking a look at the first picture (higher end zone 2), the disparity of HR from mile 2 to mile 5 actually increases by 10BPM while only increasing in pace by 8 seconds. This is because pure zone 2 running (just below or at LT1) is extremely drifty. You are running on the razor’s edge. Every second you want to run faster comes at a cost of added stress—in the form of elevated HR.

The combination of zone 2 running with super trainers can actually lead to zone 3 running. Which *can* be fine at times, but if you are consistently running like this, you will be burnt out—especially when it comes to longer run.

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If you’re new to running, or looking to add more volume to your training no matter your skill level…make your training boring again! Get a boring shoe and run in zone 1!

Have a great week!

-BTR