Free Nikes
Well, not actually free in the financial sense.Wired has a great article explaining the development process for the Nike Free, Nike's newest line of running shoes designed to emulate the barefoot running experience. Basically, during research, Nike discovered that Stanford track coach Vin Lananna encouraged his runners to train barefoot on grass. Stanford's success indicated that there might be something to this approach - so Nike investigated how they could recreate the barefoot experience in a running shoe. After all, the last thing a sneaker company wants to hear is that the best athletes in the world are taking off their shoes to go train!
The key to Nike's reign as the king of sneakers has been its ability to reinvent itself and stay ahead of the curve. While I haven't really been that impressed with the style of their recent basketball shoes, I am definitely more interested in their approach to rethinking the running shoe than Adidas's $200 computerized entry.
I still haven't tried on a pair of the Nike Free - but I head to NY this weekend, which always includes stops at several sneaker spots, so maybe I'll take a pair for a test drive.
Grooves cut into the sole of the sneaker allow an
increased flexibility and range of motion.
posted by Paul at
6:42 PM
1 comment(s):
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What's interesting is that every time I walk by these shoes in Footlocker I am incapable of stopping myself from picking them up and folding them into a little ball as the commercial has instructed. Good commercial, fairly ugly shoe.
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