Running shoe recommendations gone wrong

The question was simple. His Vomero and his Mach 6 are wearing out, and he wanted to know what to replace them with. A daily trainer, mostly.

That is how most of these start. Someone comes in with a shoe question.

And almost every time, the shoe turns out to be the smallest part of the answer.

Here is what Wouter's consult actually looked like, start to finish. Not because it is a dramatic case. Because it is an ordinary one, and it shows what these actually cover.

What he came in with

One bit of history stood out. He stepped off the course at Eindhoven last year at 30k with pain on the inside of his knee. It never showed up in training, only on race day. His physio put it down to a strength imbalance between his left and right leg, and Wouter has been in the gym twice a week since January because of it.

He also told me what he thinks he does wrong. That he runs a bit like a model, feet landing on one line, and that his arms swing a little wide. Runners usually know their own quirks better than they let on.

Then he sent me his videos and his Strava.

The shoes he asked about

Let me start with what he came for.

His Vomero fits him well and works for his easy and long days. Since it is due for replacement, I would point him at the Saucony Triumph 24, a little wider with plenty of cushion for a marathon build. The New Balance 1080v15 is a solid alternative.

The Mach 6 is on its way out too. For faster work I would want something with a bit more return underfoot. The Hoka Mach X3, the Adidas Evo SL, or the Puma Deviate Nitro 4 all fit the bill. The Puma keeps the narrower feel he is used to.

That answers the shoe question. But it took the least time of anything we covered.

How he actually runs

I work from the ground up.

His landing is good. Midfoot on both sides, foot coming down close underneath his knee. He does not overstride. That running like a model feeling is real, you can see the narrow base from behind, but it is not costing him.

His cadence sat around 162 on the treadmill. That is a touch below what his Strava shows, so I would put most of that down to treadmill nerves rather than a real cadence problem.

A lot already looks solid. His hip extension is good, his posture is relaxed, and his arm swing is clean. The arms are slightly wide like he said, but nothing worth changing.

Where it gets more interesting is higher up the chain. His knee drifts inward a little during stance, and he rolls into some internal rotation as he pushes off.

And his two sides do not quite match. His left leg comes up less than his right through the swing, and you see the same thing in his heel recovery, 137 degrees on the right against 127 on the left. That lines up with the imbalance his physio flagged. The video just shows where it actually turns up when he runs.

The strength and mobility side

This is where a shoe question turns into a plan.

I would bias his hip flexor and activation work toward the weaker left side, matching the reps to what the left can do rather than the right. Wall hip flexor drills, kettlebell hip flexor lifts, step-ups with hip flexion.

Then some hip external rotation and abduction strength to help with the knee drifting in. Hip airplanes, 90/90 with a leg lift, side plank clamshells.

And one small thing on the running side. A touch more forward lean for efficiency, which a simple falling-forward drill takes care of.

What his Strava added

The video shows how he moves. Strava shows how he trains.

His marathon effort sits around 160 bpm, with his hardest efforts up near 182. That gives us honest numbers to anchor his easy days and his marathon effort to, instead of guessing off pace alone.

One caveat there. His arm monitor was throwing odd readings in the first kilometer or two before settling. I have been down that road myself and switched back to a Polar H10 for exactly that reason. Before you train off your heart rate, the data has to be worth trusting.

The problem shoes can't fix

He also asked me about something that had nothing to do with his feet. In his last two marathons, Utrecht and Rotterdam, he got a stitch low on his right side somewhere after 35k. It built the longer he pushed and eased off when he walked. Never once in training.

Utrecht was extremely hot, which makes everything harder to read. But a stitch that only turns up deep into a race usually points at fueling, not mechanics. The longer and harder you run, the more blood gets pulled away from your gut toward your legs. If your stomach is not used to taking on carbs at that effort, it starts to complain.

The fix is to train your gut like you train your legs. Practise your race fueling in your long runs, at the amounts and the intensity you will actually race at. Wouter made the fair point that he fuels fine in training, but that is usually at easier efforts. It is the carbs at marathon intensity, for three hours, that the gut has to learn. Worth testing different amounts, and different forms too, gels against a drink mix, to find what sits best.

What he actually left with

He came in for some shoe recommendations.

He left with a rotation, a clear picture of how he runs, the strength and mobility work that matches it, training zones pulled from his own data, and a plan for the fueling that had cost him twice. Gait, strength, mobility, training, shoes. One runner, one connected picture. He left a 5-star review on the way out.

None of it was dramatic. That is sort of the point. Most runners do not need a revelation. They need someone to look at the whole thing at once and tell them where to put their attention.

If you have got a shoe question that you suspect is really a running question, that is what these consults are for. You send me a video and your Strava, I break the whole thing down and tell you where to focus. I do them in English and Dutch.

Book your own running gait analysis here:

Thanks for reading 👟

Tim