Commentary: The Nike Bias

It’s time for some participation for you readers out there. Post your comments on this page folks. I want to hear from you on this topic. Do you hear this in your part of the country? What do you think?

So as most of you know, I live in Portland, Oregon. Portland happens to be the home-town of Nike - Beaverton is anyway, which is a suburb of Portland. I know lots of people that work at Nike and I use a lot of their gear. In fact, I wear. . . their shoes.

I’m not paid to wear their shoes. I wear them, because they make some excellent running shoes.

Yet, when I talk to runners all over the country, I hear people say things like this: “I can’t run in Nikes, they don’t have enough support.” Or even better, I had an athlete tell me that her doctor said to her (and I quote): “Next time I see you, I don’t want you to be wearing Nikes.”

This is really interesting to me.

But first, I can tell you where this strange stereotype comes from. It started back in the 80s when a lot of Nike “fitness” shoes ended up on the feet of runners. A more general fitness shoe - that looks like a running shoe - doesn’t provide the support that a running shoe does. Nike got a bad rap.

I even fell into this camp. I was running in high school in the 80s and wore some of the lightest Nike running shoes possible. It was straight to Shin-Splints-ville for me. So I switched to Asics and ran in them for years. But at some point, Asics discontinued the shoe that I loved and I had to move to a new brand of shoes. I stumbled on the Nike Zoom Air Elite and loved it. I ran in them for several seasons - and this was BEFORE I moved here to Portland.

So why do these ideas that Nike can’t make a good running shoe persist?

What we’re really dealing with is a stereotype. I looked up the term in the dictionary and here’s what it says: “a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents and oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude or uncritical judgment.” (Source: Merriam Webster’s On-line Dictionary)

That sounds a lot like what we’re dealing with here. People that have never put on a Nike shoe will come right out and tell me: “Nikes don’t have enough support.” I often ask them, “have you ever run in Nikes?” They usually come back with either a ‘no’ (they’d been warned away by some older, more seasoned runner) or a “once back in high school”. So is that an “over-simplified opinion”? It’s probably at least an opinion based on very limited knowledge.

What’s even more interesting to me is that Nike basically invented the modern running shoe. You know Prefontaine, Bill Bowerman, University of Oregon. The story about making shoe soles on waffle irons. Yes, this is the company that figured out how to make a rubber-soled running shoe.

My intention here is not to sway anyone into wearing Nike shoes. Everyone makes a personal choice and no brand of shoes will work for all runners. In fact, you need to put on your feet whatever works for you. Which is why it is so interesting that people might discount out of hand a vast brand of shoes that might work for them.

I should add that I run in multiple brands of shoes depending on the type of run and terrain. My shoe box runneth over, quite seriously. I run on Nike, New Balance, Montrail, and Innov8 to name a few. You have to go with what works for you in the situation.

My interests here are to understand why this persists among runners. Is it a conspiracy by other running shoe companies? Are we just willing to pass on a stereotype so easily? These are interesting questions.

I invite you to weigh in on this. Will I get a bunch of comments that say that I’m a Nike hack and that they love brand X or hate Nike. Absolutely. But just keep in mind that I’m not a Nike hack and I understand you love your shoes. I’m just interested in understanding what’s going on in the minds of runners out there.

The floor is yours if you want it.

Have a good weekend runners!

Coach Joe

Running Wild with Coach Joe – a blog focused on marathon racing, training and motivation. Bookmark us at http://coachjoeenglish.wordpress.com or use your favorite RSS feed reader to get the latest news and articles. Running Wild is also available on Yahoo! 360 and MySpace.