80s & 90s runners: how did you survive the terrible shoes?

I started out in England in the early mid-70s, and for training and racing, we often ran in plimsolls (tennis shoes). In the 60s, even top-class runners raced in tennis shoes with the inner liner removed.

I think the first specialized running shoe I had was some kind of Tigers in the mid-70s.

My first pair of spikes had fixed spikes, not screw in.

I'd forgotten that. Leather X-country spikes that went hard once they'd got wet and dried out. I'd have to wet them again before I put them on.

Started running the in the 70's in canvas high tops, so 80's and 90's shoes were a great improvement. The sun is the same in a relative way.

I mean, I can't compete with the tennis shoe people... but this whole conversation is great. The new shoes are total panacea to the classic old-timer conversation of how hard we had it, and how much better our PRs would be ...

I ran a 4:05 1500m in waffle racers, can you imagine how fast I would have been with DragonFlys? (Please, don't be too harsh in the coming insult train, but you gotta agree, this topic is amusing.)

I ran the Houston marathon in those back in 85'. Loved the shoe but man did I have a huge blister on one foot afterwards.

Had a pair, they were fantastic. Very little padding but if you wanted to run fast, these were the shoes. Still remember doing a 5 times a mile repeats in these shoes one evening. Might have been one of my best workouts in high school.

I was road whoring for Kangaroo in early 80's. Took a Kangaroo upper to shoe repair guy and a pair of Nike Mariah. Had him put the Nike Mariah midsole/sole on the Kangaroo upper. Felt great and didn't look out of place with my Kangaroo singlet. For a 165 lb guy I need all the cushioning the Air Mariah could provide. American Eagle trashed my legs too much.

I trained thru the early and mid 80's in the Pegasus. raced in the Nike American Eagle and Mariahs. Never had any issues with shoes

I think I wore the Brooks Vantage in the early 80's. Also had the Nike waffle trainer

Nike Pegasus came out in 80s and was a fantastic shoe. Saucony Jazz was a great shoe. Adidas had just come out with the Web. Nike Vengeance was a killer shoe, and raced in the the Zoom spikes. Just paid a little less buying them out Dick Pond's garage in Glen Ellyn..

It really depended on the surface and distance. For track especially 3200m and under the spikes and flats I used in the early 90s were fine and honestly pretty light even compared to today. For sure the tech had improved but we weren’t suffering. The early 90s tech / weight was far more of a performance leap than what my uncle ran on in the mid 60s than what todays tech is compared to the early 90s.

Where things were much rougher was on the roads and longer distances. You either had super bulky shoes that didn’t have the explosiveness / responsiveness of today’s high tech foam and honestly seemed to dampen one’s power or lightweight shoes with little padding that definitely made your feet sore in any distance above 10K.

First shoes I trained in were Chuck Taylors, only for a few weeks though. Then I got a pair of Reebok trainers that were heavy as sh!t and I raced the 800m in them. Eventually switched to Nike Elite flats from the bargain bin which were half size too small but I had to have them because everyone else did. I had the original Air Max which were lighter than the Reeboks so they felt great. Had a mix of different trainers, most of them sucked but I wouldn't have known the difference then.

I recall forgetting my trainers one day and doing a 7 mile run in boat shoes. Can't believe my coach allowed me to run in them.

My eventual favorite trainer was Nike Air Max 2 Lite. The Duellist was a great flat. I ran in Nike Zoom Ultra spikes which worked great at the time.

How did we survive? Coaching sucked ass and I rarely ran more than 30mpw in high school so I probably only ran 25mpw in trainers (other 5mpw in spikes). If you're barely running, you hardly notice how bad the shoes are.

Terrible shoes?

Tiger Jayhawks - Maybe one of the best flats in history.

Nike Terra TC - Want to train and race in the same shoe? That was it. Phylon was my friend. Then again 5:20 pace was easy back then.

Nike Air Edge - 5k? Marathon? Like the Terra TC that shoe was versatile, and a great introduction to "air" in a flat.

Shoes weren't gimmicky. A sole and midsole on a curved last, and an upper that hugged the feet. Sockless was best. A great time to be alive, and a distance runner.

I had some promise in high school but got injured constantly due to terrible shoes, lack of coaching that recognized things that are obvious today

Simple: we were a lot tougher and not whinny little bit!%es. Grow a pair

The same way we survived only having 13 tv channels, no cell phones, no google, no gps, no venmo, no instagram, & no youtube.

We had what we had & we lived the best we could with it. We didn't have everything, but we had everything that we needed. Seems like these days, people have everything & they still want more. Now get OFF MY LAWN!! lol

I miss trainers and racing shoes from the the late 90s early 2000s. So much better than the over cushioned crap we have now.

I was fortunate to grow up in Atlanta and my dad lived in Boston. Between Jeff Galloway's Pheidippides and Bill Roger's store in Boston, I was able to get as good a running shoe as you could find on the market. I remember Nike coming out with a shoe that had little foam inserts you could put under the shoe liner if you wanted a higher arch or more heel lift. It cost $65, which was the high water mark for running shoe prices back then.

The shoes were just fine for anyone running 40 mpw, but probably weren't the best for high mileage. What was really hard running back in the 1980s was the kind of static stretching all the runners were doing. Before every run, my XC team would do 20 min of horrible stretches that no runner would even think of doing today.

Nobody trained in nike airmax shoes. The shoes everyone trained were pretty minimal