I am having a crisis of shoe. I thought I had it nailed. After years bouncing around between every possible running shoe you can think of, starting with Brooks The Beast back in March 2012, realising my Morton’s Neuroma pretty early on and swapping to Nike Lunarglides and Pegasus for the early runs before changing back to the Brooks Adrenalin for a long time via Saucony, Mizuno, and many more, after some time in Hoka One One Stinson tarmacs (effectively a sponge with laces) I went minimal and natural with Altra Running Torins and their zero drop before zeroing in on the Adidas Pure Boosts.

The Pure Boosts are camo and do not look much like running shoes however their slight sole and flatness meant I managed to not only run pain free for a couple of months, but also rack up a PB for the 10K by 47 seconds and the Half by 7 mins 7 seconds at Eton Dorney. Again with not pain.

But that is, I guess, the reason for this post. I ran the Two Oceans half in Cape Town and was in agony and this week on Wednesday my run home was the slowest and the most painful run of my entire running life. My go to shoe, of which I have three pairs, destroyed me on a simple 10K amble home. And if they did that, how the HELL can they get me through 26.2 miles at the Berlin Marathon in September?

And so, the analyst in me has made a decision, I am going to spread my running over a number of different shoes, and will actually note how they make me feel. So far I have a few candidate shoes to look at.

I have thin socks, tight socks, padded socks and will make suitable note of how they combine with the shoes, but suffice to say I hope in the end I will find the RIGHT shoe for Berlin as I need to start training in June.

Today, day 1, and for the Jost Running 5k/10K We Go Together medal I will try a combination of the BROOKS GHOST 7s and Balega padded running socks on the wet London roads. Let’s see how I go.