Why I Stopped Running In Altra Shoes

It sounds funny, but I used to heavily promote Altra shoes to all the runners in my life even before I started running in them. The reason was that Altra had supported a lot of runners in the vegan community and at that time I had only heard positive things about the shoes.

I bought myself a pair of the Altra Lone Peak 2.5 and the One 2.5. These were not cheap but I figured it would be last pair of running shoes I buy for quite a while.

At the time I started running in the Lone Peak my mileage was very low. Most of my focus was on cycling (as it still is) and I was doing maybe 3-8km a week in total. I also did this running on gravel trails, which is a lot easier on your legs than tarmac. When I got the One 2.5 I added in a speed session a week and increased my mileage very slowly.

It was then that I started getting a pain underneath my one foot, in the middle. I immediately took some time off of running. I have run through my fair share of injuries in the past and I saw where that got me. It is very rare that you can successfully run away from an injury (pun intended) and often you will just end up worse off than when you started.

When I got back into running again two weeks later, the pain was still there. I refused to believe this was being caused by the Altra's. A week later the pain started in the other foot. At this point it could only be shoes.

I stopped running in the them completely and just used a pair of Vibram Five Fingers I've had for over two years. The pain went away. Fans of the Altra shoes might say that I was just not used to the zero drop of the shoes. This is not possible, as I had been running in Vibrams for over two years, a zero drop shoe which is as minimalistic as you are going to get.

One of the people who convinced me to buy a pair of Altra's was a guy named Harry. Harry is an incredible ultra distance runner who at the time was being sponsored by Altra. I met Harry in Thailand this year and saw that he was now wearing a different type of running shoe I was not familiar with. I asked him about Altra and he told me he had gotten the exact same pain underneath his foot as I did. After a few weeks of running in a different pair of shoes it also went away.

I know runners who have been running in Altra shoes for years and love them. They rate them as the best shoes ever. My experience was obviously a lot different. I would recommend to you that you try them out. You might end up loving them like many others do, I just don't.