Running is the sport du jour. If you’ve been in sweating distance of your local park on any given Sunday you’ll have seen the evidence: hoardes of people heading out for a run.
Running’s exploding in popularity, entries for the Auckland Marathon ballooned this year, seeing the most registered participants in the 42.2km distance since 2014.
Camille French (nee Buscomb) is one of many people who have embraced the marathon distance recently. A career track athlete, French began running as a teen and represented New Zealand in the 5000m and 10,000m at the Tokyo Olympics. She pivoted to the drawn-out distance in 2022, after the birth of her daughter, and went on to compete in the distance at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
French says although running wasn’t considered at all cool when she started out, she’s always appreciated the sense of community found among runners.
“Much of training is pretty solitary but you get to events all over the world and have so much in common, despite never having met before.”
French was personally drawn to the longer distance because the training was more suited to family life. She says it offered the opportunity to start from scratch, physically.
“It was almost like starting again after giving birth, I had no baseline in terms of performance, I wasn’t judging myself against the past.”
Like many hobbyist runners, the mother of two says these days the longer runs count as her “me” time. A New Balance athlete since 2011, French says the ritual of lacing up her running trainers plays a crucial part of her routine, delineating the mental shift between her domestic life and the regimen she keeps as a professional runner.
“I make sure I put my gear on right before I leave the house, then take it off almost immediately when I get back.”
Participants in running sports are on the rise, but so too are injuries. ACC reported receiving 16,407 claims for running-related injuries in 2024 – 3000 up on the previous year.
Offering tips to avoid injury, the ACC underlined the importance of wearing appropriate shoes, warning “some sports shoes are designed for running and others aren’t. You can reduce your chance of injury by wearing shoes that were designed for the task.”
Robbie Smith manages technical running store Smith’s Sports Shoes and specialises in putting customers and people into the right footwear.
In his opinion, picking the best footwear comes down to a combination of factors: knowing your physical requirements, your running form and goals. He says the running shoes in their Dominion Rd store fall into three broad categories: daily trainers, tempo shoes and raceday sneakers.
Daily training shoes combine comfort, versatility and support. They’re characterised by designs that offer lots of cushioning, to aid durability and shock absorption. While they might not have the technical features of faster sneakers, Smith says their surfeit of support means they’re ideal as your go-to sneaker, made “for everyday running, longer runs and light zone two recovery runs”.
Floatier, tempo shoes provide a middle ground between your stalwart daily trainers and aggressive raceday shoes. They’re relatively lightweight, with responsive features like energetic midsoles designed to help you maintain a faster pace, while still offering cushioning that provides durability for sustained efforts.
Smith says they’re generally “a little bit lighter, a little bit quicker and ideal for people wanting to do quicker sessions or intervals”.
As the name suggests, raceday shoes should be reserved for events – such as half and full marathons. They have technical features aimed at competitive runners looking to achieve personal bests.
“A lot of raceday shoes are carbon-planted, which means they’re a lot more responsive and give a lot more energy return, which ideally means that people go quicker,” Smith explains.
New Balance’s race shoes, the FuelCell SuperComp Elite v5, weigh only 170 grams yet house a carbon fibre plate for increased stiffness in the forefoot, which aids propulsion. The average runner might not need this level of technical advancement, but Smith says “if you’re running kind of 4:30 pace and under, you really utilise the carbon”.
In a perfect world, Smith says runners would own the trio of shoes, but he concedes that’s not always feasible.
“I think the main thing is that daily training shoe, which once gives lots of cushioning, and then a tempo shoe as well, something to go a little bit quicker in.”
As well as aiding performance Smith says investing in more than one pair to rotate through will pay off for all levels of runners, as “having the two shoes also means it prolongs the life of both”.
While picking the right sneakers is a fine art, Smith suggests knowing when to replace your trainers is a more of a straight numbers game – the average pair reach their end of life after covering “anywhere from 600 to 800km”.
That’s not to say that at kilometre 801 the shoes are going to fall apart underfoot, more that they’ll be less effective at preventing injury.
“The cushioning on the inside compresses over time. Normally, you maybe feel a few niggles in the knees after 650-700km.”
An abundance of options means more choice, but it also means for beginners the choice can be daunting. Further complicating choices is individual running biomechanics, ie people’s natural running form: what works for one runner won’t be the best for another.
Proper running technique requires better balance, greater muscle strength and a wider range of joint movement than walking does. For that reason, Smith recommends getting a running biomechanic analysis – a service many stores such as his offer free of charge.
The process involves running on a treadmill (barefoot and in a selection of sneakers) to analyse your running style – specifically how your feet strike the ground – in order to diagnose the most ergonomic fit of shoe.
There are three main types of running styles: supinators (also called under-pronators) are runners whose outside edges of their heels hit the ground at an angle; overpronators have feet that roll excessively inwards; and the feet of neutral runners land on the outside of the heel, before slightly pronating slightly to absorb any shock.
Smith says it’s worth investing the time and money in sneakers, no matter how experienced you are as a runner, because they’ll make the biggest difference to performance.
“The main thing is getting yourself a pair of shoes ... some sports you need full kits and head to toe, to get outside [with running] it’s just a pair of shoes, and then just one foot after the other.”