Daily trainer discussion

A topic that has been on my mind lately is the Daily Trainer market.

I honestly don’t know anyone who runs more than 30 km per week and uses a so called ‘Daily Trainer’.

Is it outdated technology or is there something else going on?

Let’s dive a bit deeper into the daily trainer market and how it evolved.

What is a Daily Trainer

Daily trainers describes workhorses like the Nike Pegasus, Saucony Ride and Brooks Ghost.

The intended purpose is to use a do it all shoe, that can run fast and slow, but also be used for walking and other sports activities.

Top models right now are:

1. New Balance 880v15

2. Brooks Ghost 17

3. Saucony Ride 18

These are shoes that are firm enough to provide some stability, but still have plenty of cushion to support runs up to 1,5 hours, perfect for runners that are new to the sport.

Do it all sounds great

A do it all shoe sounds great on paper. But this is not the case.

‘Daily Trainers’ that try to do it all, don’t excel in anything really.

As the shoe market is evolving into a hyper specific consumer driven market, where you are nudged to buy 6 pairs of shoes because every run needs something different, a daily trainer just feels off.

It isn’t exciting to run hard intervals in a daily trainer. It isn’t comfortable to run a recovery run in a daily trainer. Your feet start hurting after running for more than 1.5 hours in a daily trainer. It just doesn’t hit the spot for intermediate runners.

That’s why I don’t see any runners that runs more than 30 km (20 mi) per week that uses a so called ‘Daily Trainer’ for their training runs.

The solution:

I think the ‘Daily Trainer’ category serves a single purpose: Onboarding new runners.

It has decent performance for a relatively low price (up to €150 euro). Comfortable to run/walk or long walk in and can help you get into running nicely.

But my recommendation for anyone who starts running a bit more is to quickly move into a two-shoe rotation.

The roadmap looks like this:

A new name?

Maybe we need a new name to describe this category of shoes?

Maybe an allrounder, onboarding trainer or beginner friendly trainer. Feel free to share your ideas!

Whatever your shoe rotation looks like right now, I’m happy to help you optimize and plan a bullet proof rotation for the future that fit’s your runnig gait and running needs.

Thank you for reading,

Tim 👟