Can Your Shoes Over-Correct?
I’ve been wearing motion control shoes ever since I realized that my 10-year-old cross-trainers weren’t really suitable for distance running. I used to suffer from shin splints and my Asics Gel Foundations took care of them nicely. I’ve also flirted with the Brooks Beast and I have a nice pair of New Balance 1123s waiting to be used.
Though I’m free from shin splints, I’ve suffered from peroneal tendonitis in both ankles intermittently for the past two years. I’m not ready to jump on the Christopher McDougall bandwagon, but I am starting to wonder if my motion control shoes are over-correcting for my overpronation, and perhaps squeezing the tendons and muscles on the outside of my foot.
Yesterday I went out for my second outdoor training run and experienced sharp ankle pain for the first time in weeks. I stopped after about 10 strides, returned home and iced it. Later in the evening, I was wearing my regular “knock-around” sneakers, which are a pair of Brooks Axioms I’ve had for at least a year. They’re relatively lightweight and on the pronation scale they fall between neutral and stability. My ankle felt fine and I decided to run a couple hundred yards as an experiment. No pain.
This morning I decided to experiment further. I wore the Axioms and went for a 5k. My ankle felt fine the whole way. I ran a 27:49 (17:08 over the last two miles). The 81-degree heat was much more of a factor than my legs. I had reasonably quick turnover and no discomfort at all.
The Axioms would never hold up if I were running longer distances, but now I’m wondering if my motion control shoes helped create my new problem when they fixed my old problem. Has anyone else had a similar experience? I’m sure there are plenty of people who move from neutral to stability and from stability to motion control, but has anyone ever had to move in the other direction?
I’m starting to believe that, although starting to run with stability/motion control shoes is a good idea, our bodies adapt and require less correction as we continue to run through the years. My next shoes will be neutral cushion (or barefoot-like).
One week to go!
My wife definitely overpronates and used to run with motion control shoes. When she made her most recent shoe change, she moved to a stability shoe and is doing well – no running injuries to speak of.
I wonder myself if I should be considering switching from my current Asics 2130s to a lesser shoe. I’m definitely tempted to go for less shoe when I buy next, but for now I’m just going to keep running in my current shoes and break them down a bit – going well past the normal manufacturer’s recommendations for miles.