New Shoes! Inov8 RocLite 315 review

Off-road running round here in the wintertime presents something of a footwear quandry. On the one hand, from november to march the countryside is generally submerged in a couple of inches of liquid mud, lying on top of about 2 feet of slightly-less-liquid mud. So you’d think that spikes, or heavily studded shoes, would be the order of the day.

On the other hand, it’s rare to be able to string together more than a couple of miles without needing to do some of it on the road, or other paved surface – so spikes are right out, and studs are not much better. So some kind of compromise shoe is required.

Over the last 12 months I’ve been alternating between a pair of Saucony Grid Jazz, which are really a road shoe with a slightly grippy sole, and, to be frank, pretty hopeless in the mud, and a pair of Inov8 Mudroc 290s, which are awesomely grippy, but fiercely minimalist, and downright uncomfortable on the road. A niggling hamstring injury has forced me to stop using the 290’s for all but the softest of conditions, since the complete lack of padding seems to aggravate things, so I needed to find a shoe somewhere in between the two.

So, when I was contacted by the lovely people at FitnessFootwear.com and asked if I’d like to review a pair of running shoes , it couldn’t have come at a better time.

FitnessFootwear have what looks like the complete range of Inov8 trainers & fell-running shoes, plus a pretty good selection of other trail/cross-country trainers, so after a bit of time exploring the options available on their (pleasingly easy-to-use) site, I settled on the RocLite 315s .
I ordered them on thursday, and by saturday morning I was unpacking them.

First impressions: They come up a little on the large side, and when I first tried them on I was worried that I should have ordered a 1/2 size smaller. I bought my MudRocs a size smaller than my normal trainer size (you need a snug fit for fell running), but these I got in my usual size 10, and there was quite a lot of room in the toe. However, the fit around the heel and midfoot is great, and they felt very secure once laced up, so I decided to give them a try anyway. The heel cup is quite low-profile (though not as low as the Mudrocs, or their Walsh precessors) but I had no problems with heel lift at all. Oh, and I reckon they look pretty nice, too.

I took them out on a 10K route with a wide range of (wet!) terrain – a couple of miles of road, an old railway track, parkland, woods, and a bit of farmland. My worries about the sizing were unfounded; in practice my feet didn’t move at all in them and they were very comfortable. I have very wide feet, and I suspect that half a size down might have been a bit tight.

The grip was excellent, on a par with the mudrocs on all but the absolute worst of surfaces. On a steep, off-camber section of muddy grass, there was a little bit of slipping and squirming from the forefoot, but other than that it would be hard to tell the difference. The soles clear well, refusing to clog up even through a ploughed field of clay-ey mud, and on a few reps up an almost-too-steep-to-run grassy hill (the beacon hill in newbold commyn, for any local runners following along!) they didn’t slip once.

There’s a little less support under the arch than I prefer (I have quite high arches, so generally end up putting in additional arch supports or insoles) but that should be easily solved. The padding under the heel makes for a comfortable ride on the road, and although there’s a bit less padding under the forefoot than on my sauconys, I don’t think it would be noticeable unless you were running very long distances on the road – it also makes the shoe more stable on uneven surfaces.

So, overall I’m delighted with these shoes, and I think these are going to become my off-road trainer of choice for the winter (The Mudrocs will be relegated to the back of the cupboard, to be brought out for races and the twice-annual trip to run on ‘proper hills’).

Chris May : 09 Nov 2008 14:00 |  Tags: Running |  Comments (2) |  Trackbacks (1) |  Report a problem