I've been running in the DS Trainers for awhile. I like the shoes but thought about switching to a neutral lightweight trainer just to experiment. I read a thread here awhile back about not limiting yourself to support stability shoes even if you tend to pronate. One thing I'm concerned about is that I do about 90% of running on hard surfaces (asphalt/concrete) and that the lack of support might lead to injury problems down the road.
I train in Ds trainers (and brooks ravennas) and do tempo runs and occasional races in speedstars. Similar feel while being a couple ounces lighter and more flexible feeling. I did a marathon in them last year and was overall pretty happy with them. Not wanting to reaggravate an Achilles injury, I opted for the speedstars over hyperspeeds in a 5k last weekend and was good with them.
Like the previous poster, I do 80% of my training in DS-Trainer 15s and use the Speedstars for tempos and long races. I also have a pair of DS-Racers I use for track workouts.
I feel that other than the Speedstars feeling more flexible than the DS-Trainers, probably due to lack of any medial posting, both are pretty similar.
But what about the newer model Sky Speed? How does that fit into the realm of the DS-Trainer and Speedstar? Seems like Asics had a lot of shoes that are very similar in design.
The new Sky Speed is almost identical to last year's DS Trainer in every way except color and medial posting. It looks like the guys at Asics just took a popular stability show, removed the posting, changed the colored and called it the Sky Speed.
I approve.
imarunr wrote:
But what about the newer model Sky Speed? How does that fit into the realm of the DS-Trainer and Speedstar? Seems like Asics had a lot of shoes that are very similar in design.
I haven't run in the skyspeed but I've held them and they seem comparable in weight to the speedster (mid 8 oz) and have the appearance of some stability even if they are listed as purely neutral and 10oz. I would definitely consider a marathon and some training in them. They're also much better looking than the current speedsters and ds-trainers.
NJ Possible wrote:
I haven't run in the skyspeed but I've held them and they seem comparable in weight to the speedster (mid 8 oz) and have the appearance of some stability even if they are listed as purely neutral and 10oz. I would definitely consider a marathon and some training in them. They're also much better looking than the current speedsters and ds-trainers.
Its SpeedstAr, not Speedster. The Sky Speed is completely neutral, I don't know how you could see stability in it.
Sky Speed= neutral DS trainer
Speedstar=neutral, cheap, lighter, bottoms out quickly.
Would the speedstar be a good choice for making the move from a stability trainer to a neutral trainer?? I usually do 10-12 miles of faster runs on DS Trainers but my knees sometimes start to break down late in the run (probably due to some mild heel striking). Would a neutral shoe cause more problems?
Does having a flexible bottom with the absence of a post help strengthen the feet to be able to push-off quicker?