A pair of lightweight running shoes with outsole flexibility sees Syida Lizta Amirul Ihsan giving it her thumbs up
UNTIL running shoe designers can come up with lightweight stability shoes, flat footers like myself have to make do with either heavy and stable shoes or light but unstable ones.
I have sustained many falls wearing lightweight shoes, which explains why I keep returning to heavy ones that deliver stability, especially with tired legs and less-than-well-trained stamina.
That explains my trepidation when I was asked to review the new Nike Free RN Motion Flyknit, the new addition to the Flyknit family.
These shoes are made for neutral runners with feet arches. I don’t have foot arch and running in shoes not made for your foot can be an unpleasant experience.
But this turns out to be one of the best neutral running shoes I have tried. At less than 220g, it is light and, if you have strong legs, it can easily take you on long runs comfortably.
The feature I like best is the multi-directional outsole flexibility that closely mimics the movement of your feet. So whether you move linearly during a run or multi-directionally during training, your feet feel free throughout exercises.
As I have wide feet, this feature in some ways expands the original width of the shoe. Couple that with the upper sole made with one-piece upper that looks like knitted cloth, my feet feel snug and comfortable.
RUN FASTER
I wear this for a morning run and while my shins hurt for the first 200m (which is often the case when I wear neutral shoes), I enjoy the light, bouncy feel of the shoes once the pain subsides.
It makes me run faster because of the lightness, so instead of jogging, I do interval runs, alternating between sprints and slow jogs.
What I dislike though, is that the shoe is cut very close to the foot and you can only wear very thin socks with it. The shoes are meant to be worn without socks, but given my foot width, socks help buffer my skin from abrasion against the shoe’s upper.
According to Nike, this shoe “enables the runner’s most dynamic movement” by pairing “a fully adaptive, single-piece Nike Flyknit upper featuring 3D ribbing from the forefoot to heel with the new auxetic midsole”.
I have to agree with the Press release. For shoes that aren’t made for my foot type, the Nike Free RN Motion Flyknit is comfortable and could be my training companion.
Gold medal sprinter Allyson Felix says that using this pair of shoes “is all about strengthening feet” because “the shoes really move with you.”
I am not going to be an accomplished athlete in this lifetime, but I have to agree that flexibility, weight and comfort are the shoes’ biggest draw.