White punks on dope, except the punks are runners and the dope is an over-priced pair of trainers
White Punks on Dope by The Tubes
So good, I named the post after it
One of the best things about running is that it's pretty cheap to start. There are no gym fees for plodding along the road, so essentially all you need (for warmer times, at least) is a T-shirt, a pair of shorts/joggers/leggings and a pair of trainers. OK, you might want to record your run in some way, but you can do that with any fairly basic phone and Google Maps or the Strava app. Given that you can wear pretty much any basic casual clothing (denim not withstanding) to run in that might reside, Narnia-like, in the back of your wardrobe, the shoes are the only real outlay. You can buy a pair of running shoes for around £30 or less if you know where to shop (specifically, a certain High St retailer who I'm not going to name because their owner is a ruthless billionaire who is destroying many other retailers through hostile takeovers, not to mention mismanaging a certain Northeast football club). Any review you read would tend to say that, while £30 shoes would do a job, they'd not be good for longer runs and miss certain features that improve comfort and help reduce risk of injury. I am a bit of a trainer snob when it comes to the footwear I buy for actually wearing to do fitness activities, so I've not tried shoes at those level, so I can't really comment, though I'm inclined to have some doubts that they'd be actually that bad. I should qualify my trainer snob comment in saying I'm certainly not a fashion victim when it comes to buying trainers either, and usually won't buy any pair unless they are at a discount, the bigger the better (my current trail shoes were bought online for about £30, but were less than half price). Suffice it to say, to rock up at your local parkrun, or start a C25K programme, I'm sure the £30 shoes will do a great job.
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| Another satyrical picture Fuck off, Tumnus. I don't want to go to Narnia, I was looking for my old Van Halen T-shirt to go running in that I left back here in 1986 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Tumnus |
Again, received running wisdom suggests that to get the best trainers for you, you should go to a shop that does gait analysis so, making like the narrator of Three Blind Mice, they can see how you run. I did undertake this on one accasion when Sportsshoes.com had a physical shop in Bradford (I'd recommend this retailer as they have a fantastic range and are pretty reasonable, though they now exist solely - no pun intended - online . And, no, I'm not getting paid for that). I can't remember what the outcome was, though at the time I wasn't running, but buying shoes to wear for the gym and aerobics, so it wasn't critical, as long as they fit and gave me plenty of shock absorbance for the leaps I have a tendency to do in classes. They did fit and worked well in short sprints up and down the aisles and, needless to say, I was happy with my purchase, but you do feel (rightly) obliged to purchase something from a shop if you take up their time and expertise to have a gait analysis. Shops like Up and Running and the appropriately named (see later) Sweatshop still have a presence on the High St in some towns and offer gait analysis, so they may be worth a visit if you feel you have some issues with your current shoes. They will often give a discount if you're a member of a running club as well.
Although you can get shoes at about £30, the higher end of the sports shoe market (and I mean actual performance trainers, not fashion statements produced to have the name, or possibly the actual blood, of their celebrity endorsee on them, to add a massive premium) will be over eight times as much. Taking something like the Nike Vaporfly which cost about £250 thanks, in small part, to the integrated carbon fibre plate that returns more of the energy from your foot-strike than the usual foam sole (plus or minus integrated air sack). The price is also thanks in a much larger part to the huge amount of athlete sponsorship and promotional activity going into making people want these shoes, hoping it will make them run as quick as Eliud Kipchoge. Spoiler alert: they won't. While it's not really my place to stop anyone spending a quarter of a grand on a pair of shoes, I do reserve my right to mock them. Let's start with how they look. They're so high, you end up looking like Quay Lewd from 70s arthouse avant gard proto-punk band, The Tubes. And what's all that pointy shit about, at the front and the back? They look like you've trodden in a pair of kayaks. All this is on top of the fact that they fell foul of regulations amid accusations of technological doping. There is some good evidence that these shoes add an unfair advantage to athletes using them if you look at the number of long-standing long distance running records broken since the introduction of this footwear and the fact that the shoe now adorns the feet of most podium finishing racers at athletic events of all levels around the globe. All the other major competitors in the shoe market have also introduced similar trainers to have the same effect, so if you did want to get on board the carbon fibre bus, you aren't limited to goods produced Nike.
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| Quay Lewd of The Tubes Rocking the Vaporfly look 40 years ago Source: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/outrageous-american-shock-rock-band-the-tubes-on-stage-at-news-photo/3278905?adppopup=true |
The really stupid (or really clever, depending on you PoV) thing about these shoes is that they last a very, very short time. Some reports say they can go for about 120 miles. As I started writing this post after my long run this week, I had run just shy of 9.5 miles today alone. I ran 3 miles two days earlier. That's going to be 12 miles a week, so those shoes will last me maybe 10 weeks. That's £25 a week for trainers alone. I'm sure this is a worst case scenario, and maybe you buy these in the run up to a big race, but you're still talking about an amount similar to the cost of my regular outgoings for petrol in running my car for a pair of trainers over that time.
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| Objects of desire Christ knows why. Coco the fucking Clown would think they looked too ridiculous Source: https://top4running.com/p/nike-zoomx-vaporfly-next-ao4568-400 |
The fetishisation of sports shoes isn't actually new. Nike, the Evil Empire (actually, the other Evil Empire, as the major Evil Empire for me is actually Disney. See their approach to milking the Marvel and Star Wars sub-brands), also produced the Air Jordan which were arguably the most popular shoe in the 80s and 90s.Why were they so popular? Was it because of high-tech construction including the shock-absorbing the air-sack integrated into their sole? Not really, as all it took was a puncture on one of them and you ended up running around in circles. Was it because it was created to give Michael Jordan, arguably the biggest sports star on the planet at the time, a shoe for his huge feet? That's probably part of it, but it was down to the whole marketing juggernaut that backed this up. This included the mechanism ensuring there has been a new model released every NBA season since 1990 to the present day, with more variants than Covid coming out at an alarming rate in between new models. People lapped it up and bought the shoe every time, to such an extent that it embedded the Air Jordan in US culture ever since (and, by extension, in global culture, see Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing and Space Jam to name but two examples). Indeed, you may not know what clothes the 90s zeitgeist wore, there were definitely Jordans on its feet. It's like the joke: "How do you milk a sheep? Release a new model of Air Jordan". Actually, that also works for pretty much any other product that wanky people wearing ironic glasses in advertising label as "iconic" (see also iPhones, vagina-scented candles and faddy diets - I'll probably discuss the latter in a later post).
Public Enemy with Fight The Power!
From the soundtrack of Do The Right Thing, which was part of making Air Jordans so popular, somwwhat ironically
Nike (and most other sportswear brands, to be fair) pitch themselves as being fashionably ethical and inclusive, but these claims are as hollow as a politician's promise. For example, look at how they fall over themselves to support Pride Month, proclaiming their support for the LGBTQ+ Community, yet also are happy to sponsor national teams from brutal regimes, like that of Saudi Arabia, in whose countries being gay is a crime. The thing is, these companies are actually nothing more than style brands and don't actually make shoes. That is to say, they don't own any factories, but merely design and market things to plaster their wholesome swoosh logo on. They commission factories in the developing world to make shoes for them, dictating manufacturing standards to the companies making the shoes, but take little or no responsibility for ensuring the workers in these factories are treated well, kept safe and paid a decent wage. This has resulted in workers at factories in Indonesia, Vietnam and China going on strike for improved conditions. Naomi Klein covered this in her book No Logo, and it's worth a read to see the damage these horrendous business practices continue to do to the poorest people on the planet, even now, over twenty years since the book was published, all so we can have those colourful, boingy shoes to run in. Still, the tiny hands of children in SE Asia working in sweatshops make for incredibly detailed stitching and, besides, you simply can't get that standard of work in the West, certainly not for the pittance they are paid. And if they fancied a pair of Air Jordans or some Vaporflys, maybe they could save some of their wages. Putting aside a month or two's worth might cover it, if they can just manage to cut back their outgoings on extravagances like food.
Speaking of Pride, this is the first blog entry of Pride Month. Given that this is a fitness blog and many of my friends from the LGBTQ+ community are from this area of my life, big love to all of you. I'm on your side.
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| PRIDE Source: https://drexel.edu/now/archive/2021/May/Drexel-Celebrates-Pride-Month-2021/ |
This week's activities
All activities were powered by Tikiboo, as per usual. One of the best tracks that popped up on my new running playlist this week was this banger, sampling a bit of Miami Sound Machine. Now, imagine my surprise when, as I'm picking my way through the muddy part of the trail section of my long run and I hear the main refrain is "The motherfucker's gonna drop the pressure" which seemed not to make it to the radio edit (see also the album version Kanye West's Gold Digger). I love discovering a bit of swearing in a song tht I didn't know was there in the sanitised radio version.
Runs
Friday: Butty shop 5k (5.05 km, 27.58 minutes, 427 kcal). A sneaky lunchtime run around my usual loop from work to end up at the sandwich shop
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| West Yorkshire vista |
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| Calder! |
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| Take the righthand path |
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| About halfway through. The steeple is where I'm heading to |
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| Take me home, country road |
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| The least interesting boat |
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| Now we're getting there. It's a bit whacky! |
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| Lock, cock and two smoking... trainers |
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| Random selfie mid-run |
Saturday: Step (45 minutes, 388 kcal at Real GroupX). Second week on the trot. After last week's opening week free session, I loved it so much I paid to be here this week. It was just as awesome. You won't get a better programme of group exercise sessions anywhere near me.
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| Step aerobics Channeling my inner Dave Lee Roth in Snow Leopard Tikis, appropriately enough, as one of the songs in the mix was actually Van Halen's Jump |
Monday: BC (United release, 60 minutes, 413 kcal) al fresco on Bank Holiday Monday. Didn't have to stop too many times to intervene when my son started to get a bit lairy in the garden, but missed the abs track and cooldown.
Tuesday: BC at the gym (release 86, 45 minutes, 465 kcal)
Wednesday: BC at the gym (a mixed bag of tracks, 60 minutes, 437 kcal)
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| Wore some new Tikis the day they arrived (ordered during the Bank Holiday sale) |
Thursday: Clubbercise at the gym (45 minutes, 362 kcal)
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| When in doubt, use your glowsticks |
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