Selecting the Right Run Shoes

RDP 038 - Selecting The Right Run Shoes

Carrie:

Hey everybody, welcome to the RunDot Podcast. Today we have a shoe-savvy coach joining us from his car — high tech here — and he's gonna teach us how to find the right run shoes for our feet. I'm joined today by Nolan McKenna. He ran collegiately at North Central College and now coaches athletes with RunDot and uses RunDot as the foundation of his own training. He recently raced for Team USA at the 2026 Ultra Marathon World Championships — yep, he was with the best in the world, it was in New Delhi last March — and get this, you guys, he finished seventeenth overall and helped his Team USA teammates secure third place. Nolan, welcome back to the show, how you doing?

Nolan: Yeah, happy to be here, yeah.

Carrie: From the car — we're all good though, we do lots in the car. And for everyone that's just joining us and doesn't maybe know me, I'm Carrie Tollefson, I'm an Olympian, broadcaster, and your guide to the world of RunDot. We treat the show like any good workout — we'll start with a warm-up question, settle into our main set conversation, and then wind things down by having Nolan answer an audience question on the cooldown. Lots of good stuff today, so let's get after it.

All right Nolan, I know we've had some internet issues — so you're here with me, right, you can hear me?

Nolan: Yep, yep, I can hear you just fine now. Yeah, like everything, as soon as you need technology to work, it never works. So I had to switch locations —

Carrie: Hey.

Nolan: — but we're here, we're doing it, so yeah.

Carrie: That's good, two thumbs up. Well, let's start with our warm-up question, because it's a hard one — I'm not gonna lie, I struggled with this one. But who is your favorite professional runner, amateur runner, or running influencer to follow on social media?

Nolan: Yeah, lately I've really been enjoying Clayton Young's series. I watched his series before, but he's doing Chicago this year, kind of leading up into that — I really enjoy watching his stuff, I like how meticulous he is, how he has a plan, he has a goal, and he's just working towards that.

Another kind of more local person that I actually train with quite a bit — his name is Trevor, on Instagram and stuff he goes by HybridTG — he is like a hybrid athlete, so he runs and also lifts. His stuff is cool, because you've never seen anything like it — he just broke 2:30 in the marathon at Boston this past Boston, but he also benches like 250 pounds, and he doesn't look like a runner — he has way more muscle than any runner you've ever seen run that fast. But some of the stuff he does really breaks the mold of what runners are, and I think as runners, a lot of times we take ourselves too seriously, and he really makes things fun — you can just do things, you don't have to have such a structured, locked-in plan, sometimes you just need to go have fun with training and kind of push yourself in different ways. But HybridTG, shout out Trevor, so yeah.

Carrie: I love that. I had written some other things, but when you were speaking about your faves, I was thinking Sarah Hall just keeps coming to mind. She's a professional runner and is still just crushing it in her 40s, and I love how Sarah will share her story of being a mother to four Ethiopian girls — she's married to a former American record holder, Ryan Hall, and he too kind of has a different way now of looking at health and wellness and training and fitness. I just feel like Sarah is obviously all in on running with the world's best, but also has a life outside of it. So I think that's who came to mind after I was listening to you — I really like her, and she does kind of open up on some of her training, her setbacks, different things she tries. She hitchhiked from one of her runs the other day — I texted her, I'm like, Sarah, you need to be careful — she's like, you know, only where I'm at right now. So yeah, I enjoy Sarah Hall quite a bit.

Nolan: Yeah, I enjoy her a lot too. Yeah, sweet.

Carrie: Okay, let's head to the main set because we've got a lot to cover today. But before we get into running shoes, I wanna hear a quick update on the World Champs last spring, and then also what you're training for this year.

Nolan: Yeah, so World Champs was incredible — traveling all the way around the world to New Delhi, India, just total culture shock, everything was just so much different, but it was amazing. So the way the championship works, you take your top three athletes and combine the total times, and whoever has the lowest combined total, that's how your place is determined.

So going into it, we knew the conditions — it was hot, humid, the air quality in that part of the world is not super great — so we wanted to take it pretty conservative, and we went out pretty conservative and pretty slow, and let the majority of the field kind of go, and we just kind of knew that they'll come back to us. It was so fun, running as a team — me and my two other teammates, we worked together, we had our little pack, and throughout the race we were just slowly progressing, and it was so much fun the last fifteen K-ish, to just feel the blood in the water of, like, people are starting to crack a little bit, and I still feel good — I could just feel it, like there's people dying up ahead of me and I need to go chase those guys if I want a medal, and just to kind of be doing it for more than myself — doing it for my teammates, but also my country, my family, my son —

Carrie: So cool.

Nolan: — and just having it be more than just me chasing a time, or trying to compete — having it be more than that was so, so incredible.

So now I'm training for the fifty-mile US championships here in November, in Illinois actually — so slowly ramping up mileage and stuff, but this one's not like a world qualifier or anything, this is just purely a US championship race. So yeah, really looking forward to it.

Carrie: And when you were over in India, you raced a little bit off roads, but I mean, we saw the track, we saw roads — what was the surface like again? I know you told us a little bit on the podcast, but remind me.

Nolan: Yeah, so it's the road championships, so it was a 5K, like out-and-back loop basically — mostly on roads, there was a section of cobblestone which was not super, super flat, but at the end, on one end we went around a track — so every 5K we would come around the track, and that's where the team camps were, so we would get our bottles and water and stuff like that. So yeah, we were on the track just a little bit every lap, during like the TV —

Carrie: I see.

Nolan: But aside from that, pretty flat roads, yeah, yeah.

Carrie: That's kind of nice actually though, because then you know where your water, where your people are, and you can kind of see where you're at too — sometimes, on obviously out-and-backs you get to see the people, but you really can tell how far you are when you have a track like that. That's cool.

No marathons though — I'm waiting to see you run like Chicago or something like that. No, it's not in the plan?

Nolan: Maybe someday. Yeah, like, I don't know, I feel like I found my little niche, and I'm having success and I'm having fun with it — but I do feel that like Olympic Trials qualifier kind of still calling out to me a little bit. So yeah, maybe someday.

Carrie: Okay. Well, I do have to tell you that I was talking to Andrew before we hit record, before you were back on the call, and I said, you can't be posting those workouts on Instagram that say you're running 14 minutes for the last 5K on a progression run where you've run four, three, three or four miles before it at a very good clip. I mean, I'm thinking, Nolan, you need to run some 5 and 10Ks as well — you're pretty speedy. And that's on the treadmill.

Nolan: Yeah, I think treadmill is quite a bit easier than actually running on the track, but you never know. Yeah.

Carrie: No, I totally disagree, I totally disagree. So we're gonna have to have a conversation about this — maybe a whole other podcast where you and I can hash this out.

Okay, so I just think it's really cool — I mean, you're doing so many really neat things. You're crushing it in your own running, you're coaching runners for RunDot, and you use RunDot yourself, you work at a run specialty store, so you're with runners all the time, you have this great family — like you've got everything going on. But we want to know a little bit more about you, so tell us about the store you work out of.

Nolan: Yeah, so I actually just got a new job — so I'm unfortunately no longer with the store, I'm kind of moving up the chain of events. So I got a new job, started September first, so very new to it still. But now I'm an independent sales rep, so I cover a couple different brands — Topo's, Oofos, and Cotopaxi — and I kind of go around to different stores selling product and stuff, and trying to help support the stores that I was working in, and some other kinds of stores too, try and help support them to sell the product. So kind of moving up onto the higher level of things.

I loved my job working with customers and stuff, but I think for me, if I wanna have the biggest impact in the world and in the industry and stuff, I needed to kind of keep moving up. So very excited to be starting this role. But yeah, at the running shoe store, it was so much fun, I worked there for five years — wouldn't have kind of given that up, but yeah, I really, really enjoyed it.

Carrie: That's really cool, congratulations. I mean, we're still gonna have you then in everyone's ear kind of explaining different tech and stuff like that. But I wanna know — the kids nowadays in high school, they know everything about all the technology in the shoes, they know everything about all the nutrients and things like that, or at least they're trying to. Were you always kind of into technology, into the gear and what we can wear to be faster, to be better runners, to not get injured, that kind of thing?

Nolan: Yeah, I was always pretty much into it. Even before I was working at the store, I was always kind of like a nerd with that kind of stuff — just trying to figure out what the cutting-edge stuff is. Yes, it's nice to just focus on training, and you don't have to do any of these extra things, but I mean, there's so much out there, so you might as well kind of see what's out there and see what works best for you. Yeah.

Carrie: For sure. So I wanna know — we're gonna go back to the days of being in the store and interacting with customers, also being as knowledgeable as you are, not only with all of the products we can sell in stores, but also with your own running and being world class like you are. So what is one of the funniest interactions you remember with a customer so far? Do you have any conversations where you're just like, what is going on in their brain?

Nolan: Yeah, I mean there is a lot of kind of almost frustrating things, where people are like, I need one specific brand, like I need a New Balance, nothing else, I don't even want to look at anything else. And I'm like, well, first of all, what kind of New Balance — model to model they're so different, and it's like, how could you just swear on one brand and then cut everything else? Like that was kinda crazy to me.

But one of the funniest ones — this woman came in, and she must have been getting dressed in the dark or something, I don't know — she came in, and we were going through the fit process, and then I look at what she's wearing currently, and she has one shoe on one foot and then a completely different shoe on the other foot. They were both white shoes, but it was really funny — she felt really bad, and I didn't want to make a big deal about it, but I'd never seen — I'm like, did you do that on purpose?

Carrie: Maybe she knows something we don't know.

Nolan: It's like, no, it's like — that was really bad. So that was really, really funny. Yeah.

Carrie: It's what all the cool kids are doing, Nolan, it's what the cool kids do.

Nolan: Hey, this shoe feels better on one foot and this shoe feels better on that foot, so let me just wear one of each, why not?

Carrie: Hey, it actually is kind of genius, to be honest — I mean, people get custom orthotics. Adidas, when I was training with them back in the day, they actually made shoes that fit your foot — there was like a vehicle that would go around and they would take images of your foot. So maybe she just knew something we didn't know.

Nolan: It didn't seem like it was on purpose though.

Carrie: Hey, well — okay, just maybe — maybe she's maybe like me, where she needs these big glasses now, in her, you know, forties.

But when an athlete comes into a store, what do you want to do with them? When they want to find the right shoe, and yeah, maybe they've only been in one brand, or maybe they've been told something different from a different person, or maybe they just like a shoe — I love colors of shoes, and there are times where I'm like, I just want that color. But what's the steps you go through with an athlete when they walk in?

Nolan: Yeah, one of the first things I do is just have a conversation with them — I think the biggest thing is just listening to your body. If you're having aches and pains, that's clues to me that things are or aren't working. So I kind of split a lot of injuries into two different categories — there's like shock absorption-related injuries, so sometimes that's shin splints or bottom-of-the-knee pain, or just general shock absorption-related things. And then there's also alignment-related things — so if you're having stability, like ankle pain, or side-of-the-knee pain, or hip pain and stuff like that, that could be an alignment thing, where if your body isn't necessarily strong enough to hold you in good alignment, then a lot of those stability muscles might be kind of overworked, and you could start getting some pains related to alignment.

So it kind of gives me clues of what do we want to work on — do we want to give you more cushion, or do we want to give you more stability, or a combination of the two? So I think the biggest thing is listening to your body — if you're running great and you're not having any pain, then you could just kind of stick with what's working, you don't necessarily have to switch things up. I think that's kind of a newer way of thinking about things — previously we would more closely analyze people's gait and stuff, and I still do watch them walk and kind of see what's happening — if they're pronating inward and kind of collapsing in, and what that's doing to their ankles, their knees, their hips, kind of looking at their alignment.

But before, it used to be, we want to minimize any kind of pronation and really make it structured and kind of stop all movement and stuff like that. But now I look at it more as, everyone has a different tolerance level of how much flexibility and how much pronation they could have before it starts becoming an issue. I see it a lot with kids or younger people, where they're super bendy and totally pronating inward, but they don't have any pain and it doesn't seem to bother them — so that's not really an issue. Kind of depending on how strong they are and how strong the muscles surrounding everything are, they could be in a pretty neutral shoe and might have some pronation, but if it's not an issue and they enjoy what they're wearing, that's kind of the most important thing — you feel good and you're comfortable with what you're wearing, more so than correcting what might be wrong.

But then on the reverse side of that, some older populations, as soon as they start pronating at all, it starts throwing everything off, and they start getting knee pain and hip pain and stuff like that. So kind of baseline, most important thing is that you're comfortable, and kind of listening to your body in terms of pain and stuff like that. But that's the way I kind of look at things, yeah.

Carrie: I mean, that's why a lot of shoe stores do allow — and we don't want people to go and run a hundred miles in their shoes and then come back and say, oops, I got the wrong pair — but that is one of the nice things about most run specialty shoe stores, is they will let you come back in if, after a day, you go for a run or two days and you're like, this isn't working, I'm getting aches and pains in places I've never had before. That's really nice.

I think now when you think of shoes, there's so many things — so many people ask me questions about shoes too, just because I am a high-end athlete, I run all the time, I coach people, I talk to people all the time, I speak at all the major marathons and do all that stuff. But there are so many new terms and technology out there that I even get confused. We'll talk about different drops, we talk about stack height, we talk about foam, carbon, rods, plates — some have them, some don't. I even just was DMing someone high up at Adidas, like, no, these are shoes I should have my daughter in, I want her in the fast ones now, she's fully grown, she's gotta be able to compete. And there's just different terms all the time — even if it is carbon, some shoe brands just call it something different.

So what do you think? When you tell people, how do you help them research what they're in, and what do you know about these shoes that really make a difference for these athletes in training and racing and all the things?

Nolan: Yeah, I mean for the most part, keep your race shoes for racing — especially the carbon-plated ones, I really suggest using those only for races. If you wanna use them maybe once or twice a week for workouts too, that's fine, but it's not something you should be doing your easy mileage in. The carbon fiber-plated shoes — they do help a little bit, but it could be the same way like putting a cast on might give you some more support — some of those muscles, if you break your arm, for example, and you put a cast on it, that's allowing your arm to do less work, but a lot of those muscles might start to atrophy a little bit and become weaker, and that could increase your risk for injury if you're wearing them too much, because the shoe is kind of helping you mechanically a little bit, so without that, your foot's not gonna be quite as strong. So I would say, keep your carbon fiber-plated shoes for race day — I do use them for workouts too — but I mean not everyone even necessarily needs a carbon fiber shoe for races.

I always say the shoe that's gonna help you get to the finish line the fastest is the shoe that's gonna get you there without any pain. So a shoe might be faster on paper, but if it causes your calves to cramp and you start walking in the last 10K, that's not gonna be very fast either. I've definitely been in that situation, but yeah.

Carrie: Yeah, I know, it really is a personal preference, I think, but it's so nice to have an expert like you or someone in a specialty shoe store to help guide an athlete.

Let's go back to that training shoe, not so much the carbon plated, which we use in races and things like that — I mean, some people like to train in their carbon but we kind of pump the brakes a little bit on that — but how do you think a running shoe should feel to us? What are the signs that we're actually in the right model, and also what are the signs —

Nolan: Yeah, I mean, I almost make an analogy kind of like with food — everyone has different personal preferences in terms of what meals they like, the same thing is kind of with shoes, people like different things, and there is a huge amount of just personal preference with everything. I might like a really light, snappy feel, but other people might want a little bit more cushion or a little bit more of a supportive feel. So kind of baseline, there's a lot of variation in terms of what people enjoy, person to person.

But I kind of go based off of a natural movement pattern — so I always say, you should go with what you notice the least on your foot. If you could put a shoe on and have it feel like there's nothing even there, that's a really good sign — which one feels lighter, which one you notice the least, those are some things we're looking for, because we're just trying to help support your body's natural movement pattern. If a shoe is kind of in alignment with your natural movement, then that means you're not gonna feel it. And if a shoe is kind of fighting against your natural gait and movement pattern, then that'll show up in terms of, you'll just feel pressure in certain areas in some different spots — those are some things to look out for.

When you're trying shoes on, anything you feel immediately is only gonna be amplified the longer you wear the shoe — it might feel like a little pressure point initially, and you're like, is that gonna be an issue — if you're wearing it for eight hours a day, that'll just kind of be amplified and get worse and worse, it's not really gonna get too much better the longer you wear it. But yeah, I would say go with whatever you notice the least, and whatever feels the most comfortable — let comfort be your guide, for sure. Yeah.

Carrie: Yeah, and I always think too, when I'm out on a run, if I'm not thinking about my shoe, like you said, that's a good thing — if it just feels good, natural. But also too, I notice if I'm feeling sluggish nowadays from too high of a stack height, or too much foam or whatever, that to me — I don't like that, I like a little response, I like a little bit of feeling like I'm peppy in those few minutes I'm out working out. I want to feel good, I want to feel fresh, and not sluggish, because life makes you feel sluggish, right?

When an athlete comes into a shoe store though, Nolan, what do you want them to share with you — what kind of information — you think about that when you go to the doctor, I always try to remember what I need to tell them, right, and you always forget something. But when you go to a running store, it's important for you to tell them how much you're gonna be in your shoe, or your previous shoe — did you walk around in it all day, do you have a knee issue, do you have heels that kind of fire up with plantar fasciitis — I think those are things we need to not be embarrassed by or scared to say. I think we should tell our shoe rep some of the stuff we need to work through with our shoes.

Nolan: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think injury history is a really big piece of the puzzle, but also, what are you using it for — are you gonna be running cross country, are you gonna be on the trails, are you lifting weights in the shoe, are you using this as a work shoe, are you a nurse or a teacher who's standing all day — that's a different kind of use case for different things, and that'll kind of help guide the person to pick what shoe might be best for them.

And then, yeah, injury history, what you're using them for, and then also what shoes you did or didn't like in the past — that'll give me a really good idea of comparable things — let's say I really liked this one shoe in the past, but they don't make that shoe anymore — I could give you some pretty comparable models, and it might not be from that same brand, could be a completely different brand, but if I know what you've liked in the past or what you didn't like, I could kind of navigate some stuff based on that — gives me an idea of what personal preferences you might have, yeah.

Carrie: Yeah, if an athlete can't get to a run specialty store — I grew up in a town of sixteen hundred people, and we did have a sports store, but a lot of times they might have had like two pairs of shoes, so I would order shoes through ESPE back in the day — you know, or if I was in the Twin Cities, like in Minneapolis or whatever, I would try shoes on there, and then we would like to support our local store, so we would order through them. But what is your recommendation if somebody can't get to a specialty run store, if they only have like a Dick's or a Foot Locker or something big like that, or if they don't even have that and they have to go online — what would you tell an athlete to do then?

Nolan: Yeah, I mean, trying to find a place with a decent return policy, I think, is pretty important, just so you could test the shoes and see if they're working. But yeah, I always recommend trying to try stuff on in person, but if that's not an option, you could go out based on different reviews — but I know reviews are not always super great, because just because someone else likes something doesn't mean it's gonna fit your foot very well.

But if you know what shoes you've had in the past, and you kind of watch some reviewers, you could almost kind of find some reviewers who have similar taste in shoes as you do — like, they really liked a shoe that I liked, so you could kind of be more confident that if they recommend a shoe that they like, then I'll also like that shoe. But everyone has such different preferences — a lot of times if you could find a reviewer or something who has a similar taste, or maybe a similar foot shape, or kind of use case, what they're using the shoes for — if you could find a reviewer who's kind of close to you, then I think that's a pretty good place to start. But yeah.

Carrie: That's a great suggestion there — there's so many people who do that now and actually do it for a living, like that's just their job is to review product, and a lot of times they're just a DM away or whatever to ask a question. But I think the big thing is try to get to a city or a store that has some options, try them out, and like you said, has a good return policy if for some reason they're not working for you when you bring them home.

You're pretty plugged in with everything — obviously now you're gonna be repping these three brands, so you're gonna be going all in on that, but you have to still know what the competition is. So what's out there right now, what do you think is the big thing, what's everyone pushing, and what are you excited about when it comes to the new running technology?

Nolan: Yeah, I mean the foam technology now is so crazy — the foams are lighter, they're bouncier, they're more responsive than ever. I think looking back to when I was in high school and college, looking at the shoes I was wearing compared to what's out right now is just insane. And you see people kind of running more marathons and stuff because of it — you look at someone like Sarah Hall, she'll run sometimes four or five marathons in a single year, where with the old shoe technology, that just would not have been possible. But people can recover so much faster, because their shoes are absorbing so much more than they ever have in the past.

I think, yeah, the stack heights are continuing to get bigger and bigger and bigger — and for race shoes they've capped it at forty millimeters, but unless you're winning prize money, it's not gonna be an issue if you're just a regular person running Chicago or something, you wear whatever you want. But yeah, I think the stack heights are getting more and more — obviously with the race shoes, the carbon fiber plates and stuff — but a lot of the technology has been trickling down into more training shoes too, which is super cool. For a couple years it was like the race-day shoes were super fun, but then the everyday training shoes were super boring — now everything's pretty exciting.

And it's also kind of cool to see now every brand has a really good shoe — it's not like one brand is head and shoulders above the rest and everything else is crap. Any brand right now, I feel like, is making some pretty good stuff. So yeah.

Carrie: I like that too — equal playing field. I mean, you and I have both grown up in this world of racing, and for a long time, those people listening here that don't quite understand what you're talking about — for a long time there was just one brand that always came out with the newest and best product before everyone else, and you saw it at the top of the game, you saw the elite athletes going for the Olympic Games, going for World Championships, chasing records — it was usually the one brand. And now you see different brands breaking the tape, and I do think it's really nice — bravo to the brand that kind of figured it out first, but at the same time I'm excited that so many of the brands decided to get together and work hard and come together to make our sport as a whole equal and better.

What shoes do you run in right now, Nolan?

Nolan: Yeah, so I've been, kind of since I got hired, running in Topo's — the new Topo Specter is a super, super fun shoe, the energy return and the bounce and the cushion of that shoe is pretty incredible. But yeah, I feel like I've never been the person who has one shoe that I really stick to — I've always been someone who has, at least since college, had a pretty decent rotation of testing out different shoes. So currently, with my new job and stuff, the Topo Specter, Specter 3, has been super, super fun for me. Yeah.

Carrie: That's cool. What is a Topo Specter 3 — am I saying that right?

Nolan: Yeah, yeah.

Carrie: Like, what is that — like what kind of shoe is that out there? Because Topo's pretty new in the running world — I mean, maybe not new, but it's definitely one of those companies that it's not a Nike, it's not Adidas yet, right, or — I shouldn't say yet — it's just maybe not as prevalent with some of the athletes that we all know. But what would it be comparable to, what do you think?

Nolan: Yeah, so the Specter is kind of similar to something like the ASICS Superblast, I would say — it's a very soft, squishy shoe, but with a little bit of pop and pickup still — it's not like a super easy-day shoe, it's definitely a shoe that encourages you to kind of go fast and stuff, which is fun. But yeah.

Carrie: Ooh, that is fun, I love that. And I think that those of us who want to support you, Nolan, and help you continue on in your career, that's good to know — those ASICS lovers, maybe try the Topos, support our guy Nolan. That's pretty cool.

Tell us one more thing before we go, because I do have the cooldown question, but your Instagram is really fun to follow — you post something usually every day, it's usually very uplifting, you've got great advice. I want to know what it is about the run that just fills your cup — because it seems like it does, you're always positive, and for somebody who can get after it like you can on the treadmill, you have to have a certain drive and love for something. And so you clearly do for the run — what is it about the run?

Nolan: Yeah, so I think for me, running has always been a space where I could just kind of clear my mind — it's always been a place where I could just kind of run and not worry about anything else in my life, it's always been a stress reliever, where I've historically just, in my life, been a pretty anxious, stressed person, but the harder I run, the calmer the voices in my head get, and everything just fades to the background and stuff. So it's a really good time for me just to have some alone time and kind of work hard, and I always kind of say there's no such thing as a bad run — even if it might kind of suck and struggle sometimes, it's a blessing, and it's an opportunity to kind of go out there and just experience life — there's nothing bad that can happen from going for a run.

Yeah, there's a lot of stressful things in life, but running shouldn't be one of them. Yeah.

Carrie: I know, it's true, and I love that you say that. I mean, I think all of us have things that we kind of work through on runs, and whether it's a hard run and just figuring out how tough we can be individually, or if we're going through something emotionally or physically or whatever — but once you get out the door and move your body, whether it's a walk, run, bike, whatever, I just think that's sweat — I can remember Dan O'Brien, Dan O'Brien's an Olympic medalist in the decathlon, and he — I do some TV together with him now — and he always says, if we're gonna catch up real quick, he'll say, yep, after this sweat, I gotta go get a sweat on, like he just needs to get a sweat in. And I remember that quite often, because I think of that too — I love a 20-minute run, those of you who listen to RunDot know that's one of my favorite things to do — and it's just the sweat about it, or the endorphins, or just the act of going for a run — it's never easy, it's hard. So I think you always feel a little bit accomplished after you do one. So I love that.

The cooldown question comes all the way from Texas — I say all the way because I'm in Minnesota, you're in Illinois, we're in the Midwest. Brandon says: "I've never thought about the insoles of my run shoes before, but the other day I saw an Instagram ad for run-specific running insoles. The pitch was your $200 run shoes deserve a better insole. And it got me thinking — is there actual benefit to swapping in better insoles, or is it just a gimmick? What do you think, Nolan?"

Nolan: I mean I'm kind of a believer in insoles myself — it just kind of custom-shapes the shoe more to your foot. The shoe companies make the shoes to fit a really wide array of people, and try to make it work for as many feet as possible, but oftentimes that means they come pretty flat. And a custom insole — some brands I might shout out are like Superfeet or Currex, but there's a lot of other great ones out there, there's even some doing more custom ones — but it just kind of custom-shapes it to your foot.

So if you think of a car — a car might have a stock seat in it, but if you look at a race car or something, they have more of that bucket seat, and an insole could kind of just upgrade your seat to make it more comfortable — it's like a wooden chair versus a gaming chair that's really custom-shaped to you, gives you support in the right spot and stuff like that. But basically, your arch acts as a way of absorbing shock and absorbing impact, and if you're having stuff like foot pain or heel pain or arch pain, an extra insole could just kind of help support that, so your arch doesn't have to work quite as hard — so it could help eliminate some of that plantar fasciitis. Or if you're having specific hot spots in your feet, an insole could help smooth all that pressure out, so no one part of your foot is getting too much pressure.

But yeah, I wear insoles in a lot of my shoes — I'm kind of a believer in the inserts, yeah.

Carrie: Yeah, again, it is really personal — whatever works for you, right? And also there are other insoles that aren't $200 — you spoke about some of them, Nolan, but there are other insoles that, if you want to try them out to see if it feels better to have more of an arch or whatever it is that they provide — but custom orthotics are gonna cost a little bit more, but they are true to your foot. Again, when it comes to orthotics or an insole, you have to remember that the shoe needs to fit with that as well — so you don't want to, if you pronate and you get a corrective insole, well then you might want to be in more of a neutral running shoe. So you gotta talk to the experts like Nolan and make sure you go to a run store, maybe talk to your orthopedic or podiatrist, those kind of people — but we want to get you out there on the road. So whatever it takes, just get in the store, get the shoes, get the orthotics, do whatever you gotta do, and continue to get after it.

So thank you, Nolan, for your great advice today.

Nolan: Yeah. And last thing I'll also say — I'll also say, it's the runner that makes the shoes, not the shoe that makes the runner. You could be successful no matter what shoe you're wearing. So I always try to push people away from the idea that you need a certain shoe that's gonna be the fastest shoe in order to be your best — the shoe is supplementary. Wear a shoe that allows you to put in the work, because it's the runner that is really doing the work. Yeah, shoes make a small amount of difference, but really at the end of the day, find a shoe that keeps you injury-free, keeps you consistent, and that's what's gonna get you there. We wanna be cool, we wanna be fast, we wanna be comfortable, but really at the end of the day it's the training and your own fitness that's gonna make the biggest difference. So yeah.

Carrie: Yep, yep. So stay away from your favorite color, and make sure that you find what makes you healthy and able to run — period.

Nolan: Yeah.