I’m sure Kerrigan knows a lot more about running shoes and injuries than I do. I also suspect that neither one of us knows very much, because, frankly, no one does. That said, I agree with her apparent position on one important point: Much of what we put under our feet has the potential to do more harm than good. You can’t “raise the platform” without increasing instabilities. When you build one of those house-of-cards structures, the higher you go, the closer you get to collapse. That’s why I believe many of us should buy the lowest-tech running shoe we can get away with. For the few who live in Shangri-La, that might mean no shoe at all. For others, it might mean a simple racing flat. For others, the very Brooks Adrenalines that were used in Kerrigan’s study. But some runners shouldn’t even look at any shoe other the Brooks Beast, or a similarly built-up shoe. Because, in their experiment of one, that’s the only shoe that will work for them.
