ARTHUR LYDIARD SHOES

I had a pair of Lydiard's shoes made from kangaroo hide that looked a lot like those, but they were the road runner version. Never ran in them but they were sharp looking with the neon orange. Wore them to a wedding once. This was in 1981 or so. I had the pleasure to meet Arthur twice back then and got to run with "one of his girls" at PSU.

so you ran with heather? one of her best friends is my neighbor.

i had a model of lydiard's shoes, it was the trainer. the shoe in the picture looks like the racing model.

Email me with a contact for Heather. I still have the mittens she made for me in 1979! Arthur's shoes weren't "runnable" for me. I still have them somewhere in my basement with my favorite spikes. Maybe this will motivate me to dig them out.

Oops

I had a pair of the road-runners, not the race shoes pictured. They were light, very well-made and smooth inside, suede pigskin but almost no support or cushioning. They wore out quickly, however, and the leather, when it got wet, dried stiff as a board. They did, however, fit me very well; the last was broad in the forefoot, which suited my foot. However, they were no better than the Onitsuka Tiger (Asics) shoes of the day, and I didn't re-order.

In about 1972 the Lydiard/Brutting shoes were the subject of an extensive and laudatory review in Runner's World. This was a bit of surprise to me, since at the time I was writing shoe reviews for the magazine, and had no advance notice of the article, which normally I would have expected....In the next month's issue it was revealed, in a full-page ad, that Bob Anderson, then the owner and publisher, had the exclusive distribution and sales rights for the shoes in North America. I wrote to Bob, suggesting that the juxtaposition of the article in one issue and the sales pitch in the next might be an ethical lapse; I never heard from Bob again, and was promptly dropped as a Contributing Editor.

The shoes never became popular, and I don't think that many pairs were sold.

They were expensive, compared to the Tigers of the day, and hard to find. Nike came out at about the same time. I never actually found a shop that sold them. I believe I could have ordered them through the mail, but paying a lot of money for an expensive shoe that you had never tried on when there were good, cheaper alternatives didn't make sense.

But I always was sort of intrigued by them and wish I'd found a pair that I at least could have touched.

I wore them for several years. Tough to break in, but after a week or so THEY WERE AWESOME! I'd like to try them again to see how they compare to modern shoes.

I had a pair back in the 70's they took a while to break in, but were great after that. In addition to the racing model I had a pair of the training shoes they were very wide and felt heavy (very much like the Adidas Country's). I wore the racers in training and wore they out. They were much heavier than the Kola Bears or Tiger Cub's that I wore to race in. I think they could be bought via the mail or at Gary Tuttle's store in Ventura.

Guys, I have tried them twice in the very shop linked above, and always refrained from buying (I have an average of shoe costs at about 2/3 of that price and I want to keep it that way) AND NOW YOU START TALKING ABOUT THEM!!1!

It's not fair!

yep, had them in '71. with the red diamond.

a couple of my teammates sent off for those Lydiard flats. yeah, remember how it was cool and fun to try and find a special shoe that you couldn't get at your local sporting goods store? a certain model, a certain color that nobody in your school or city had? It was an art, almost a hobby. Nil Brothers in Kansas City, kansas or Francis sporting goods in Lawrence.(for those of us in KC). I got some rare, imported Ontisuka Tiger spikes at Nil Bros. and some Red Gazelle training flats in Lawrence,(one of our school colors), when nobody had anything but the blue ones or the Azteca Gold model in Kansas City. I got my first pair of Adidas Tokyo spikes at Dales Hardware, in OP, believe it or not. The local sporting good stores only had Spotbuilt, looking like they were from the 1950s. Those days are over. More work but more fun. Once the Footlockers, Athletes Foot and Nike Stores hit the scene in the mid to late 70s, the 'art of finding the rare shoe' was over.

I mailed off for some Kahru training and racing flats, imported from Finland in the mid 70s. The training flats were bright flourescent orange nylon! Traffic stoppers.

Roy, along those lines, I have a pair of adidas Country's that I ordered for nostalgic purposes (had my first pair in '76). The other day I wore them for a short 3 mile run. I felt every bump in the road, but my stride felt great, almost like a real runner again. So often with today's "technical" shoes, I feel almost like I am fighting the shoe.

Still working in the movies?

[quote]Squid wrote:

Roy, along those lines, I have a pair of adidas Country's that I ordered for nostalgic purposes (had my first pair in '76). The other day I wore them for a short 3 mile run. I felt every bump in the road, but my stride felt great, almost like a real runner again. So often with today's "technical" shoes, I feel almost like I am fighting the shoe.

the heel on those things wore pretty fast. (soft rubber). I bought a glue gun and pellets to keep the heel built up to give them a longer life back in the mid 70s; as well as using shoo goo.

While EB Marathon is classic, EB actually had a quite a few Lydiard shoes. While in New Zealand in 1984, I purchased several pairs of Lydiard EB shoes. Back then, these were also shoes Arthur's old pupils, Barry Magee and Bill Baillie, still wore. I remember Magee telling me that he had a couple of these shoes "resoled" so he could continue to run in them. They were all made with nylon mesh and quite soft and comfortable. Quite heavy and very much curved! Naturally materials are very different but some features are the same and that's what counts. I just got back from Japan where I bought over 10 books on running over there. One of them is titled "Onitsuka DNA" about behind-the-scene stories of ASICS. He said that breatheability of the upper material now changed from almost 0cc to 400cc! Weight is another element.

I personally liked first round Converse shoes Arthur built (Equinox). Although I thought they were poorly manufactured, they were great shoes. I actually liked them better than his second round model--AB series (it's supposed to stand for "Anatomically Balanced" but a friend of mine who owned a running store teased me by saying "It stands for 'About'!"). That first round model, Equinox, was worn by such elite runners as Geoff Smith, Paul Cummings and Kathy O'Brien (then Schiro). Years later I had a chance to talk to Geoff Smith about those shoes but he said Converse specially made them for him. "They were too curved!" he said. ;o)

Out of 3 or 4 of original EB shoes, what I would have loved to try out was Sao Paulo, marathon racing flats. From the looks of it, it looked exactly the same as Onitsuka Tiger's Ohbori. Ohbori, by the way, is the name of a small lake in Fukuoka. They were first designed for Frank Shorter when he came to Fukuoka marathon in 1971 and, because he loved to run around 2km loop around lake Ohbori, they named them after it. Incidentally, today's top racing flats are called "Sortie". They were first worn by Takeshi Soh when he ran 2:11 and finished second to his older brother, Shigeru Soh, when he ran 2:09 in the original model but with new material and design. Takeshi, jokingly, claims that that (that he wore them for the first time in the official competition) is why it's called "SO-rtie". ;o)

lydiard racing flats

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?VISuperSize&item=260444832962

I'm sure you could still run in them - as soon as you wean yourself off of today's trainers. I've got two years - 79' and 80' - of old RWs and it's good to see the old ads of what we used - it's downright enlightening. Lydiard had it right - he knew the physics of running, I guess.

Lydiard believed that you should train and race in the same shoe and that this shoe should resemble a lightweight slipper.

I had a pair of the Marathons back in the 70s, and I kept wearing them into the 80s until my toe came through the front of the shoe. I only wore them in races, so they lasted a long time. I still have them in my closet somewhere. I also had a pair of the spikes, they were a deep royal blue, almost purple. I loved both pairs, partly because they were fairly unique. I remember them being very comfortable.

A guy in town (Spider) had a pair of the Sao Paulos, which looked really cool.