Why are Running Shoe Reviewers Mostly Pretty Slow Runners?

That’s not true at all. Plus running warehouse has good runners that test their shoes. Maybe stop only visiting Ragen Chastains blog. There’s plenty of shoe reviewers that are plenty fast for even LetsRun fake standards.

Seth DeMoor, one of the more popular youtube shoe reviewers, won the Pikes Peak Marathon last year and is a 1:05:xx half marathoner.

Fast runners wear what they are provided by sponsors

Slower runners actually buy their own shoes and value the opinions of like people

Better runners fall into the same trap that you mention - "This shoe felt light and responsive at sub 6 pace and even better pushing under 5 minute miles." Not many can run those paces thus, the review is not relevant to them.

Faster athletes are pretty lousy reviewers, IMHO. Seth James Demoor is a prime example. He weighs about 130, wears a men's size 7, has decent mechanics, and runs a lot of miles on dirt roads/trail. He can run in anything but, he tends to write off anything with stability, moderate stiffness, or weighing more than 8 ounces as garbage. Most of SJD's audience requires more shoe than he does. Don't get me started on his thumb/durometer test - laughable!

To my previous point, a lot of other faster reviewers obsess over color and how cool the shoes look rather than function. They also do not articulate functional features well (see Jamison Michael and some of the Brit guys) preferring to comment on lace length, out of the box feel, and constantly comparing it to a Nike super shoe. So many of these YouTube videos are 15 minutes of comparison to Vaporflys and little inside jokes that only their friends will get. Is the Hoka Mach 4 any good? I have no idea but, it isn't a Vaporfly so the reviewer probably wouldn't race in it and was extremely put off by the slippy polyester laces that had to be double knotted.

Disko Eric wrote:

That’s not true at all. Plus running warehouse has good runners that test their shoes. Maybe stop only visiting Ragen Chastains blog. There’s plenty of shoe reviewers that are plenty fast for even LetsRun fake standards.

I don't know who you're talking about. Why do people always make silly assumptions on this site? Running gurus, runner's world, some (definitely not all) of running doctors, plus many others all have a lot of people who shuffle on runs. You could just say there are exceptions like running warehouse, which I'm glad to hear about.

But it's still curious to me that so many others are like that. It's not an insult though, so please take a chill pill.

You make some good points. If LRC is any measure of it, better runners tend to be obsessive, opinionated, and lack nuance, so perhaps the people who are better writers and see shades of grey are the ones that do better reviewing shoes. Plus add the bigger audience. I'd still think that they'd get better given how much they run, but they may just have a different purpose, which is cool.

Willing to review shoes including the related work and running fast are likely independent in a statistical sense. And, there are more slow than fast runners

^ this is pretty accurate

One of my favorite SJD lines is he thinks the Brooks Ghost should have lower stack so it would appeal to more runners.

It is the top selling shoe in the industry. Brooks probably sells more Ghosts than all Hokas and Skechers combined. But he apparently knows better.

Sales 101. There are not many very fast runners. There are many more medium to slow speed runners. You'll sell more shoes marketing to the bigger group, than the very small group of very fast runners.

I have similar gripes about shoe reviewers, mostly though my gripe is related to reviewers of trail shoes. I mostly run ultra distances and it seems like the majority of the folks reviewing trail shoes barely or never run ultras. Then they try to give an opinion on if a shoe is good for ultras or not. Ginger runner is like this. I mean, IDK if that guy even runs races at all, seems like he always injured or was when I watch his videos and I stopped watching them awhile ago because hes one of the worst at this, where his opinion is more like conjecture because he never actually races in the shoes hes reviewing.

Anyway, if you havent read roadtrailrun you should check them out, they at least try to have a variety of runners test shoes so you get more than 1 opinion. Still they suffer from a similar issue when it comes to ultras. Its always the standard 'this doesnt have enough cushion for an ultra' like oh ok but did you run an ultra in it to find out? Probably no.

roadtrailrun multi tester reviews are probably the best BUT the more you run, the more you know what you want from a particular shoe you are looking for, so you can essentially pick out the parts of any review that are relevant to your needs and discard the rest.

For me, most of the time I just want to know if it fits TTS and what the midsole is like. The rest I can usually work out myself from the details on the site selling the shoes...

Konfuzied is the worst offender. Him reviewing racing flats is like a vegetarian reviewing Steak Tartar.