A visit to Nike's World of Running in Tokyo...
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| Former Seattle Pacific standout Kaylee Mitchell races the steeple at the world championships wearing Nike distance spikes (Paul Merca photo) |
During my ten days in Tokyo at the World Athletics Championships last month, I had an opportunity to visit the folks at Nike Running, who had a special showroom set up for the media covering the meet in the Minato City ward called the Nike World of Running.
After settling down after my adventure with some water, Adam took me through an overview of some of the spikes that their sponsored athletes were wearing, including the Maxfly 2 sprint spike, the Victory 2 middle distance spike, and the Dragonfly 2 Elite distance spike.
As has been Nike's modus operandi at major championship meets, Nike went with a singular color for all of its athletes to wear across all of its event categories, which was yellow with a blue swoosh and an orange trim.
Next were several shoes that were part of the Nike International Running Pack (above) that was launched in conjunction with the world championships in Japan before its worldwide release.
Those four shoes suddenly brought me back to my junior and senior seasons at Franklin HS wearing the red, white and blue Pre Montreals (left/Paul Merca collection); and my first two seasons at the University of Washington wearing the Sting, Waffle Racer and LD-1000.
After letting me rattle off some stories about wearing those shoes, we checked out some of the latest innovations in their everyday running line.
Over the last few years, other running shoe brands have arguably caught up and/or bypassed Nike, particularly with the core everyday runner, most likely because of two major factors: not making their running line available to specialty brick and mortar running stores; and Nike's decision to sell a large percentage of its shoes via its own company owned stores and website.
All that despite the fact that the company's competition spikes and racing shoes are the most popular among youth, high school, college and pro track and field athletes.
Nike simplified its running shoe category, with three basic silos of shoes: Pegasus, Vomero and Structure.
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| Nike Pegasus Premium |
The Structure shoe fits the supportive silo, the Pegasus the responsive and the Vomero the maximum cushioning, with each silo having a baseline shoe, a Plus shoe and a Premium shoe.
The two models highlighted during our visit to the World of Running showroom were the Pegasus Premium and the Vomero Plus.
The Pegasus Premium optimizes Nike Air to deliver an efficient, responsive sensation unlike any other Air Zoom cushioning system to date.
It features a visible Zoom Air unit with their proprietary ZoomX foam in the heel, and their ReactX foam to give it a smooth ride.
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| Nike Vomero Plus |
In contrast to the Pegasus Premium's snappy ride, the Vomero Plus is a shoe you'd want to wear the day after a hard workout.
This is the most robustly cushioned model in the trifecta, making it a supremely comfortable shoe that takes the pressure off the body even on the longest runs.
While I can appreciate the next-level cushioning of the Vomero Plus, I've personally been a little bit cynical in my old age of super cushioned shoes, after having Achilles tendon issues over the last thirty-plus years. It took me until 2015 to figure out that the combination of super-cushioned shoes and constantly tight calves aggravate my Achilles.
More information on the Nike Vomero Plus and the Pegasus Premium are available at nike.com, while information on the Nike International Running Pack are available here.
NOTE: Special thanks to Nike's Adam Beard and his staff. All photos are courtesy Nike Media Relations. paulmerca.blogspot.com did not receive any compensation for this post.
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