Nike ZoomX Invincible Review

At last a useful blog! Today I finally got hold of the Invincibles, these are the shoes I've been really keen to get hold of as they in theory are the new injury proof shoes in the Nike line up.

Back in 2008 I had crippling shin splints. I literally could not run a step without agony. I was just (re) starting after Berlin marathon (3.30) but I could not get out and train for love nor money. In a last desperate attempt before calling it a day I googled the softest, most cushioned trainers and found the Nike Vomero.

Back then these were like running on clouds. Absolutely amazing. They weighed a ton but straight out of the box I had zero shin splints.

Every time I have had an injury since I've tried newer versions of the Vomero but none of them have remotely come close to the cushioning of the originals. They were proper mileage munchers.  Within 6 weeks I was back with zero shin problems and able to wear other shoes again. 4 month after getting them out the box I ran a 3 hour marathon.

I have high hopes the Invincible are just like those old Vomeros.

So at 9.10 this morning the box arrived and at 11.30 I was heading out the door.

First things first, these shoes are insanely comfortable. Like running in slippers. Everything about them screams comfort. The ZoomX foam is pure luxury.

Secondly, they are SLOW. Dog slow, it is just plain stupid to try and push the pace. I would say today I was around 10-20 secs mile slower for the same effort as in my tempos. They have no give, every foot strike you sink into the shoe, trying to push off hard is just wasted effort.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. They really aren't built for speed. 100% these will be my go-to shoe for recovery runs as that's what they will do.

But speed - forget it! Today's run was 11 miles @ 7.00/mm and at that pace it felt real effort. I tried too hard to run pace, putting in the same effort as I would have for more like 6.45/mm. The problem with speed is that you have nothing to return energy. They are Nike -4% BUT again, that's not what they are for.

I really need to test these out at more like 8/mm where there is minimum push off. I'll save them for Tuesday!

So jury is still out. I bought them for comfort to just plod in and I can't really see them failing there BUT don't try and run anything like steady onwards as it's just not going to happen.

Pretty good week in the bag and another week of progress.

39.8 miles, 336 TSS and around 7.13/mm avge 

One more week of this and I'll try and throw in some speed work.