Running Commentary

ASICS strikes me as a brand that wants to maintain that traditional feel in a running shoe. Indeed, their most popular racers in Japan, e.g. the Tarther Japan (one of only a handful of their running shoes still made in Japan, with the others being outsourced to China), have only undergone upper updates for >10 years. It is difficult to deviate from a formula that clearly sells. If you look at the shoe counts at the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii over the last couple of years, ASICS has consistently come out on top, all this despite minimalist/maximalist trends. A brief comparison: 2013 2014 2015 ASICS 17.5% 17.7% 17.5% Saucony 16.5% 14.5% 14.3% Hoka 1.9% 6.0% 11.6% I can only imagine how hard it is to get funding to develop new technologies at ASICS, but they’ve done it. The MetaRun took two years to develop, which incidentally coincides with how long BASF and ...

Mizuno Wave Sayonara 3 Mizuno has two main “medium-weight” trainers in the neutral category: The Sayonara and the Rider. Both have very similar stack and weight but differ quite distinctly in terms of feel. While the Wave Rider (currently in its 18 th version) is designed to provide a cushioned ride and handle the bulk of one’s daily miles, the Wave Sayonara is designed for uptempo work, to provide that responsive feel in a durable package that is perhaps somewhat lacking in their lightweight trainer, the Wave Hitogami. The Sayonara 3 is the first Mizuno shoe I’ve tried. There are updates to the Sayonara 3 from version 2 and I will highlight them here but I have not personally tried version 2, so I can’t give a feel comparison. However, I have put some miles in the Sayonara 3, covering medium distance easy runs, and some faster tempo workouts to get an idea of how best to use this shoe. That said, let’s delve into it. My Sayonara 3 in size US9.5 comes in at 260g, wh...