Running Commentary

I managed to snag this shoe for a great price at the 2016 Tokyo Marathon race expo, and the fact that it came in a very snazzy Tokyo Marathon design scheme was a huge bonus. The first and only other Kinvara I ever tried was version 5. I had long heard about people using the Kinvara as a marathon racer, but never got round to trying it due to my early sponsorship with Brooks. The Kinvara 5 (K5) felt to me like a fairly soft shoe with good flexibility but was somewhat lacking in the rebound department. It was definitely exhibiting the right amount of “give” on footstrike, but not giving enough snap on toe off. The stack was just enough not to bottom out though, so it was still usable for general training, but I wrote it off for race use, after a lacklustre outing with it at the 2015 Newton Challenge 18km. Last year, word trickled out that Saucony was getting into the TPU game (a la Adidas Boost), and so I put off getting the Kinvara 6, in the hopes that the new Everun TPU foam ...

Disclaimer: This pair of shoes was provided to me by ASICS Singapore for review purposes. My first experience with the Hyperspeed was version 6. It was and still is one of a very short list of truly soft and light racing flats on the market. I remember desperately wanting to make it work as a marathon racer. However, despite swapping out the minimal insole for a thicker more substantial one, I still found myself struggling to stay comfortable beyond 10km in it. You see, the Hyperspeed 6 used a very low durometer EVA foam.  What this means is the foam is very soft, and it so happens that when I ran in it at race pace, my feet had the tendency to bottom out on the shoe, i.e. my feet would sink down in the shoe to the extent that I felt the ground contact a little too much. I’d had similar experiences before with soft shoes that just did not have sufficient thickness to prevent the feet from sinking all the way in, e.g. Skechers GoRun Ride 4, Brooks Pureflow 3. These would work g...