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Hi. My name is Gary and I’m an addict.
You see, like the late and, in my opinion, much maligned Imelda Marcos – I’m a shoe addict. Though my personal taste runs more to Fellraisers and Speedcross than brogues and slingbacks, it’s still all consuming.
For years I’ve been searching for that Holy Grail, that elusive, mythical ‘perfect trail shoe’.
In search of the perfect trail shoe…
Believe me, I’ve tried them all. I’ve tried minimalist. I’ve tried maximalist. I’ve tried hybrid, dedicated, road to trail and trail to road. I’d tried everything.
Like many others I have a wardrobe full of shoes with less than fifty miles on them. I’ve donated shoes to the homeless, to African outreach programmes, to recycling centres and to friends with similarly flipper-sized feet.
Each and every time I thought I had cracked it, that I’d finally found the perfect shoe, something went wrong. There wasn’t enough room in the toe box. The forefoot rubbed. And on and on and on.
Until I decided to take a bold step. A friend of mine recommended a shop in Fulham called Profeet and said they really know what they were talking about: “You’ll have proper footwear specialists advising you, not a teenage 400m runner who’s done a morning’s course in gait analysis trying to earn enough money to drive his clapped out Fiesta to Southend for the bank holiday weekend.”
Ask an Expert…
So I wandered over to Fulham, was seen by their Run Manager, who first of all asked what I wanted the shoes for and what was I going to be doing in them.
We went through my average mileage, my run and general sports history, discussed injuries and spent an unhealthy amount of time looking at my old shoes for where they were worn and scuffed and generally marked up.
He then took me by surprise by taking my poor abused, toenail-less feet in my hands and poked, prodded and manipulated for a good five minutes.
I’d been there a good twenty minutes and I still hadn’t looked at a shoe nor been asked my size.
Following my foot massage, I ran over a kind of heat pad which gave Richard an idea of where and how my foot struck the ground, what force was applied through what parts of the foot and, more importantly, how that applied to potential weakness in my running style.
‘Proper’ Gait Analysis
Then it was onto the treadmill for the all-important gait analysis.
To my surprise I found out I wasn’t a pronator as I’d been told previously. It turns out I have a fairly neutral gait. There was a little roll but nothing that would warrant a stability shoe.
Now this was a fairly big deal for me. I take my running seriously and it annoyed me that years before I had gone into a shop and been given what I had thought was expert advice, that I’d then followed for years, buying shoe after shoe that didn’t work for me. And it turns out that all that time I was buying an unsuitable shoe.
Rich suggested several shoes he thought would suit me. I tried three or four and finally decided on the Brooks Cascadias. Great shoes that suit me down to the ground (no pun intended!).
Don’t waste your money…visit Profeet
So my point is this.
When you’re looking for the best you can afford for something as important as your feet, why wouldn’t you speak to someone who knows what they’re talking about. I learned my lesson the hard way, spending hundreds of pounds on unsuitable footwear, when all I had to do was visit Profeet.
Don’t make the same mistake that I did – speak to the guys and girls at Profeet today.
OUR SERVICE IS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY
Profeet’s services are by appointment only, please call or book online in advance