not_kofuzi wrote:
Love sirpoc slowly turning into a shoefluencer by the way.
Ordered a bunch he mentioned (Elite 5, Challenger 5, Red Hare 8 Pro, Xtep 160x 3.5, Do-Win PB3), arrived within a week and, yeah, so far so good. Wouldn't be surprised if they came from the same factories Adidas and Nike are using, only at a 25-50% discount. Challenger 5 runs slightly narrow and the Do-Win are a tad long but they all seem great bang for the buck.
Ali is a bit of a mess though, some manufacturers don't show up at all for me (Dynafish, Qiaodan) and even for better known brands like Li-Ning and Xtep the titles and descriptions are terrible. Sometimes they seem to lump Pro and Non-Pro shows into the same page, for example. Takes some getting used to.
Ha ha I'm definitely not an influencer of any type. Anything I've bought was worth my own money and my thoughts are just my own to help any of you guys save a few quid.
It started by seeing the specs for the Li-Ning Challenger 5 and thinking "this can't be real for that price" and just taking a chance when I re started running after the summer and being hugely impressed. Not just that I got value for money, but it was actually maybe the best shoe in it's category, of any brand.
I feel shoe influencers and big brands have too much skin in the game to admit you are getting ripped off, so hopefully people will realise there are actually other brands who are cheaper and in some cases, superior. I understand how it all works, a western company approached me around London time and wanted to deck me out in their gear, but basically you have to shill it. No problem with people doing that, but I would rather just share genuine information with people rather than a bunch of BS. Just to make it clear obviously not everyone is doing this, but it's hard to take some of the reviews I sometimes see without a pinch of salt, especially when people still praise Nike shoes no matter what, yet they are clearly well under the curve of even average in most categories.
I've got half a dozen different Chinese shoes now and a couple more on the way, all for less than the price of a couple of pairs of superblast/megablast. A couple of the pairs aren't great, but considering they cost less than £50, you can't really be upset and they will still do miles in the winter when it's cold, wet and windy and I don't mind them getting trashed. Especially when a pair of pegs (which I still sometimes wear to work) are inferior to even the worst ones.
I've ordered the new Dynafish super trainer (megablast competitor?) and also the Do-Win hyper shoe, the PB Pro, which looks incredibly similar to the Pro Evo from Adidas. Hopefully might give me a race alternative to the Puma Fast R 3 which definitely lives up to the hype, but 3 times more expensive than what you can pick up the Do-Win for on Taobao.
And yes, would totally agree. All the apps are translated from Chinese, is it's an absolute mess at times. But, it's worth trying. AliExpress is more expensive than Taobao (same app just in Chinese, for the most part), but you are less likely to go wrong. So that's probably the best starting point. Everything has turned up as expected so far though.
Anyway a bit of a side note to the entire thread, but having said that I do think good shoes are a small part of the bigger picture that make up my views on training, which is a lot more holistically than just 3 sub threshold workouts a week (although this is obviously it's starting point).