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I remember when tennis shoes were little more than a thin rubber sole with a simple canvas upper. They got you through neighborhood games of Kick-the-Can and to Sunday school, if you could sneak them past Mom. Then, almost overnight, these tame little scuff-abouts morphed into weapons of intimidation and destruction. One day, I'm 7 years old and torn between the choice of red or navy Keds. The next, I'm struggling into something called the Annihilator Pro, while simultaneously installing batteries, following a lacing diagram more complicated than the Los Angeles freeway system, and trying to operate a handheld inflation pump without electrocuting myself.
Nike's new Air Presto, scheduled to hit retail shelves on June 1, makes me think that at least one footwear designer has seen the light: Running shoes should not require an engineering degree to operate. Nike is pitching Air Presto's "revolutionary" back-to-basics design as "T-shirts for your feet!" Like a T-shirt, the shoes are unisex and grouped in size from XXS to XL, with one lettered size (i.e., medium) corresponding to a range of numbered sizes (men's 9 to 11). Painfully un-T-shirt-like is the price: $85.
I was a skeptic. I figured that when you start lumping five sizes into one, about four people aren't going to be happy. Not so, says Toby Hatfield, Nike's senior advanced project engineer. "It has been done with slippers and socks, why not with shoes?" Well, for one, I put 10 to 15 miles a week on my running shoes. The most rigorous activity I put my socks through is channel surfing or possibly aerobic laundry sorting.
WIGGLE ROOM.
I decided to check the Air Prestos out for myself (compliments of Nike). My normal shoe size is a ladies 7, which happens to correspond to an Air Presto XS. Of course, the same would be true if I wore a 6.5, 7.5, 8, or 8.5. I wasn't very optimistic, but I strapped them on anyway, and took them out for a spin. I hadn't even made it past my doorman before I knew there was something very wrong. My feet felt...well, they felt...the problem was...they didn't feel anything. No pinching, no prodding, no rubbing -- my feet were free, liberated, once again in control of their own destiny. These shoes felt great! I can't say I ran any farther that day, nor did I set any speed records. But I can say with all certainty that I did not miss my "rear foot dual-density wrap-heel stabilizers and Traxion lugs" one little bit.
Now it's true that I had a good inch of extra space between my toes and the shoes. But the shoe didn't really feel too large. Hatfield explained that Prestos are designed to conform to your foot, and the extra room at the tip isn't going to shift around so that the shoe feels loose.
But would this one-size-fits-all approach work for serious athletes? I consider myself a kind of slacker when it comes to exercising. A few raindrops or even a good Eight is Enough rerun on cable TV can hijack my best-laid running intentions. But Nike claims that Air Presto has turned some serious runners into true believers. Hatfield reports that five Presto-clad men finished the Boston Marathon in less than three hours and that Master's triathlete Don Ardell wore them to victory in two international competitions. Hatfield assures me his victory was by more than an inch or two of extra shoe length.
FOOT COMMAND.
I'm still not ready to believe that all that money I've sunk into shoes with roll bars and antilock brakes was wasted, so I decided to see what the running specialists had to say about the Presto design. Susan Kalish, executive director of the American Running Assn. in Bethesda, Md., is not impressed: "[Air Presto] will be cool for the people who are born anatomically perfect or people who are close. For the rest of us, it will be horrible." But Kalish thinks this shoe will appeal to runners in "the underground movement," as she puts it, who believe shoes do nothing more than pamper your feet. "There's a theory that the human body is so well designed, the more we create crutches for it, the more we screw it up." Of course, Kalish adds, the majority of us with bodies that are overweight, pigeon-toed, or otherwise not built like Barbie will still need to rely on some of these crutches.
Nike's claim is that the simplified Air Prestos fit better than the "overbuilt" shoes that have resulted from layer upon layer of new gadgetry. The goal of the new design is to "let your foot be in control of the footwear rather than your footwear being in control of your foot." Now that's a swell idea. Unless, of course, you have feet like I do -- with the moral integrity of cheese. Put my feet in the driver's seat, and I may as well just start buying big sweatpants right now.
Kahn is a freelance writer living in New York EDITED BY BETH BELTON
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