Competitor Magazine has become my new running magazine. Dr. Kemenosh recently laid a copy on my desk to read and it has been fantastic! The magazine was good, but the online content has been even better. With Dr. Mark and I constantly giving each other the raspberries about running shoes and endurance training, I could not miss a link that appeared on Competitor magazines website.
LINK: http://running.competitor.com/2014/10/news/sole-man-shoes-ironman_115927
Article: Sole Man: The Shoes Of Ironman
Author: Brian Metzler
Notes about the author: Brian Metzler is the editor-in-chief of Competitor magazine. He has raced every distance from 50 yards to 100 miles and run in more than 700 pairs of running shoes in the past 25 years.
Authors Bio: http://running.competitor.com/author/bmetzler
The article above, which I encourage you to take a look at if you like running shoes as much as Dr. Kemenosh and I, do shows that the top running shoes finishing at the Kona IronMan races last weekend were as follows, ASICS, Saucony, Newton, and Brooks. No big surprise there, those all seem like very logical choices, however, when you go a little farther down the list, Dr. Kemenosh’s new love affair with the Hoka One One is being validated again as 6 percent of IronMan runners wore Hoka’s. That is a huge climb from 2013 (1.9 percent) and 2012 (1.2 percent). If you want me to quantify that a bit for you, more runners at the Kona IronMan wore Hoka’s than Mizuno, Zoot, Nike and New Balance!
The article goes onto explain that you can’t put too much stock into these findings as triathlon and long distance endurance athletes do tend to be a bit “gear crazy” as the author states. Secondly, they were only to count shoes by the BRAND and it’s not a specific model count. Ultimately, there is no serious science here, but it’s somewhat apparent that endurance and running athletes are making some choices with their feet out there.