Do any sub-elite (non-hobbyjoggers) here wear Altra shoes?

dude altra sucks. I'm sorry, it pains me to say that, but don't believe anything you read from altra or any of the altar cult following. They are very limited in their application for a competitive marathoner.

Their main selling point, "zero drop" just means that they load a ton of forces on your achilles and gastroc/soleus. I know tons of people who have been injured by running too much in these shoes. They do build calf strength and foot strength, but because they are just a little harder on your muscles and tendons, they put undue stress on your body that could be avoided with some big cushiony 8-10mm drop trainer.

I am not against low to the ground shoes, and I think 0 drop is good in SOME situations, ie the occasional 3-4mile recovery runs where you are jogging quite a bit below race pace.

The silence is deafening.

hobbyjoggist wrote:

I just ordered the Escalante Racer to see what zero drop and wide toe box feels like and it feels fine and even nice trying them at home. I generally prefer modest, not high, heel drop anyway but haven’t run much in anything under 6mm. I have mild PF, so I’m just trying to incorporate as much diversity as possible in my shoe rotation to see what helps or hurts more.

Am wondering if any of you non-hobbyjoggers run in Altra shoes or what you think of their entirely zero drop focus? Let’s say non-hobbyjogger means sub-elite or like 15’ 5K or so for men and equivalent for women. I can’t even yet run a 20’ 5K, so I’m not particular about that definition, but I’m just curious how Altra feels for you superhuman folks.

Yes, I was consistently injured until I switched to Altra. I don't like their new shoes as much but I still wear them a lot. I've run 14:32 for 5K. I wish they would go back to more minimal road shoes but they were bought out and have changed a lot since I started wearing them. Escalante racer is their only good shoe left.

Just gonna leave this right here

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=9381764

Thanks. I take it your injuries before Altra were non-Achilles related, yes?

I like the higher cushion Altra models as daily trainers. I do not exclusively run in any shoe and my closet is full of different shoes.

I’m a heel striker and the low drop does not overload my Achilles or calves unless I’m wearing a low-stack racer like the Escalante Racer. That shoe beats me up more than other Altras but it’s mostly due to the stack height, not the drop.

should be studying 102 wrote:

They do build calf strength and foot strength, but because they are just a little harder on your muscles and tendons, they put undue stress on your body that could be avoided with some big cushiony 8-10mm drop trainer.

I would argue that long distance running causes stress and significant impact forces on the body whether or not you have a 'big cushiony 8-10mm drop trainer'. A few millimeters of foam cushion and of drop is not enough to dissipate the impact of three times your body weight on one foot when running. As someone who was regularly sidelined with ankle sprains and ITBS when wearing Nike and adidas, I came to the conclusion that these shoes were just masking the impact, they weren't absorbing it in any meaningful way and all that support was making my tendons and ligaments weaker. I now wear a range of more low-profile brands and Altra is one of them and I haven't had any ankle issues since. I also don't feel like my toes are being crushed to death anymore which is a bonus.

In answer to the original post- I'm only an 18min 5k guy so a long way from sub-elite, but I know a couple of guys at parkrun who often wear Altra and are usually around the 15-16 mark. Both of them started wearing them because of prior injury (one of them knees, one of them ankle). So anecdotally, I would guess that a lot of people wearing Altra do so because of bad experiences in narrower drop shoes and so Altra aren't going to be the first choice for an injury-free fast guy.

I've run mid 15s so will tentatively include myself here.

I've used them quite a lot - including racing a 16 flat ish 5k in the original Escalante racer which was wonderfully soft.

I think the zero-drop thing gets slightly over emphasized. Stack height is more important on the whole. I've done quite a lot of mileage and even a few work-outs in the Paradigm and I'm not sure how anyone could describe them as "minimalist" despite being zero-drop.

I guess that's really where I see the value in them - they help get me a bit more up on my toes and running closer to how I would in a pair of spikes even if they are really cushioned and protected. Even plodding it's more of a midfoot strike.

I tried them back in early 2020 as I thought I'd experiment whilst there were no races so I wouldn't really lose any ground . My take:

I can't help thinking that surely these only make sense if you train in them and race in a more forgiving shoe. Otherwise, yes, you are eccentrically challenging the lower limb more in training and supposedly adapting to make certain structures stronger, but then you are asking more of them during races. The net gain is minimal (no pun intended). I had no issue with the 'break-in' period over a few weeks, btw.

It makes much more sense for walking, as the benefits are applied directly to all functional tasks. I am much more sympathetic to those who use Vivo/Vibram/similar for S&C training and general walking if zero-drop is the USP they're after.

I liked the Altra toe box, that makes perfect sense, even if they are too wide through the midfoot, which for me was uncomfortable (I have narrow foot and find Nike a good fit).

What put me off using them ever again (and why I don't, as I thought I might, train in them and race in a more forgiving shoe) was the build quality. Eyelets breaking, and stitching layers coming apart on the tongue and upper gets really old especially when the shoe itself isn't that enjoyable or groundbreaking (it was Paradigm). Maybe this has been solved but I've heard of others with similar concerns.

In short, I'm just not interested anymore, with the caveat that certain manufacturers do need to be mindful of their toeboxes.

I use Altra escalante racers for walking to grocery store and errands but that’s about it. Personally Too minimal for me to run in. To train it’s a mix of Hoka Clifton and Nike super shoes

I'm not sub elite, just 'local / age group competitive' but I think I qualify to share my opinion on Altra shoes as at this level training volume and intensity is more or less similar to sub elite, they just have more talent and/or have started running at younger age.

Zero drop is somewhat gimmicky, I'm not even sure Altra is still using it in their marketing. I have no strong opinion about shoe drop. I had favorite pairs with 0, 4 and 8, maybe not 12 mm; and right now tbh I'm not even sure what's the drop for all my shoes that are not Altra. FWIW, I race in Nike, trainers are mostly Nike and NB, dedicated speedwork trainer is Saucony and most of the time I would also have a single pair of Hokas and a pair of Altra Escalantes.

I liked the original Escalante a lot as it was very soft and springy for such thin stack and low weight. They tried to make it even thinner in further iterations but I don't think that made a better shoe as it also became firmer. Not that it became bad, just went from excellent to good.

Now for the killer feature. Wide toe box! That's why I always keep a pair of my Escalantes in my shoe rotation. This is especially useful if you run anything long or hard on treadmill and your feet get soaked with sweat. Narrow shoes become just unbearable, regular ones become narrow and often cause very unpleasant blisters on the outer side of the feet next to the pinky toes. Sometimes these blisters hurt so much I have to drive off the highway half way to my destination, stop somewhere, take off my socks and shoes and put my feet into a pile of snow (snowy season is the main reason to use treadmill around here). No such thing with Altras.

I would consider myself faster than sub-elite. But I'm not an olympian, so people on here would say I'm sub-elite.

I won a local race maybe five years ago, part of the prize was an altra gift card. I went online and ordered shorts and a pair of shoes, then at the end there was no place to enter the gift card number or anything like that. I eventually just bit the bullet and placed the order with my own money since I spent the time to pick out the shorts and shoes (I didn't think they had many options for things either)... Eventually the shorts come, the shoes never came. And the shorts felt terrible. So ya, I do not like Altra and would never consider them again, and wouldn't recommend them to anyone.

Gardiner's T-shirt wrote:

...

I liked the Altra toe box, that makes perfect sense, even if they are too wide through the midfoot, which for me was uncomfortable (I have narrow foot and find Nike a good fit).

What put me off using them ever again (and why I don't, as I thought I might, train in them and race in a more forgiving shoe) was the build quality. Eyelets breaking, and stitching layers coming apart on the tongue and upper gets really old especially when the shoe itself isn't that enjoyable or groundbreaking (it was Paradigm). Maybe this has been solved but I've heard of others with similar concerns.

In short, I'm just not interested anymore, with the caveat that certain manufacturers do need to be mindful of their toeboxes.

I agree with this completely. I love the toe boxes, even though the overall fit is generally sloppy. But I simply cannot trust Altra to make a good shoe, as in a shoe that won't fall apart before its time. And I don't get it--they've had 10+ years to figure it out, and it still looks and feels like they're making shoes in a garage somewhere. It's interesting to compare them to Hoka, which launched around the same time and has clearly matured into a "real" shoe company.

Altra fixed my chronic Achilles issue, so you are wrong :)

Thats part of their appeal. A huge % of altra wearers are granola types that 10+ years ago were into the barefoot trend. They like the 'foot shaped' zero drop 'natural' platform with those cobbled together cheap shoes. It makes them feel superior.

I was told that Altra changed the production of their shoes so anything Rivera or newer should be a different build quality than the older Altras. Also, the Rivera and the Torin 5 have more modern responsive foams. It's almost a certainty that they will continue with high quality foams and will likely come out with some plated shoes. They are a company that is still definitely improving.

Thank you for all the different responses. Quite a diversity of opinions for sure!

No, I had several injuries including achilles before switching to Altra. They were all lower leg or foot injuries, never anything above the knee. Achilles, calf, shin, ankle, metatarsal... I've pretty much had it all. I've been able to run 70-80 miles per week in altra mostly without any problems though.

Altra shoes remind me of the scene in Spaceballs where Barf got his foot flattened by the big statue