Your First Running Shoe

Onitsuka Tigers--I know they were blue and I think they were suede. 1975. In 1976, freshman year of high school, I trained in Waffle Trainers and raced in Nike Oregon Waffles--

http://www.arkamix.com/vintage-nike/running/nike-oregon-waffle-1972-1979

Adidas TRX, 1979.

Asics GT 2070.

Blue Onitsuka Tiger Pinto, 1973. Same shoe as a recent Running Times cover; the red version was worn on the Jim Fixx book cover.

I made my first cross country shoe in 1975 when I took the Nike Pre Montreal, bought a small 12"x12" sheet of rubber waffle material from the Nike Beaverton store , cut out sole patterns & glued them to to the shoe. It was lighter than the Oregon Waffle.

When I started Jr. High XC back in the early 90's, I ran in some sneakers from K-mart that cost about $10.

Brooks Vantage

Mine was a Chuck Taylor Converse, low cut, gum rubber sole, black canvas top for my 10th grade cross country season in 1959. It was lightweight and not a bad shoe unless it was wet.

Nike Internationalist- Early 80's. These are the first I remember, anyways. I also had a pair of the Nike Sock Racer in about '86 or '87. Cool shoe, but ugly.

http://9ingles.com/nike/nike-internationalist/

http://www.sneakersnstuff.com/en/product/1189/nike-air-sock-racer

Mine were adidas Response Trail. But they were one of the early versions where you never really knew where they were in the sequence. I think they're up to 18 or so versions of it now.

The shoe had an all carbon rubber heel outsole. Most shoes now have an inner oval of EVA that shows underneath the heel and the carbon rubber is only on the sides.

My first shoe was a Brooks shoe that had an extra eyelet by the heel. I can't remember the name but the first shoe I loved was the Tiger X Caliber GT and my first racer. Tiger Jayhawk. I love the Jayhawk so much I would race in them today if I could find a pair

1972...First pair was some sort of adidas court shoe, issued by the cross country coach. When I broke 12 minutes for the two mile he gave me some Nike "Finland Blues." They had another version called "Kenya Reds", but our school colors were blue and white. Then we moved up to Tiger "Corsairs", which were basically the same shoe as Nike Cortez... leather uppers and herringbone soles, white with red and blue stripes. They were all pretty terrible, but we thought they were awesome at the time.

The winner.

ggilder wrote:

New Balance waffles from their original storefront on Mass Ave. in Cambridge in 1957, followed by years in Karhu flats from Finland.

New Balance, some crappy kids model, 1983. The cushioning turned rock hard by spring track, and my knees nearly gave out. Scary thing is I ran probably another 500 miles in them until I saved up and bought a pair of Nike Odyssey in time for XC pre-season in July '84. They were very pretty, but too heavy in retrospect.

Can't remember what I had right after. At some point I switched to Asics DS Trainers for most of college.

year 2000. i was 13. they were some type of new balance shoe i got at re-sell shoe store. they were really nice though. thinking back on it they definitely look old school in my mind's eye

oldXChasbeen wrote:

Saucony Jazz

Ditto 91

Nike Air Talaria circa mid-90's. Nice, neutral lightweight trainer in the day, but a quick search reveals Nike has refashioned them as a boot? WTF?

klop wrote:

Brooks Guy wrote:

Brooks Villanova 1980

Yep, me too. Same shoe, same year. Hideous blue shoes with orange stripe. When I got "serious" a couple years later, I felt I could justify spending FORTY DOLLARS for the Vantage which was in all the running magazines.

1979. - Brooks Super Villanova, mom and dad were shocked to pay $26.00for a pair of running shoes. My high school coach would call Mark Bauman in Flint and he would send them out to us.

Asics 2100's. Ditched those giant bricks pretty quickly.