The perception of ride is multidimensional for running footwear

Abstract

Footwear assessment is thought to be influenced by shoe comfort and the feeling of the ground-shoe interface during contact, sometimes called the ride of the shoe. Runners are often asked to rate the ride quality of smoothness as an indicator of comfort. However, previous work has shown that smoothness does not directly map to preference or comfort. This suggests that footwear assessment may be influenced by multiple perceptual qualities of ride. The goal of this study was to explore how various ride qualities influence footwear assessment. We evaluated the sensitivity of ride quality ratings to time and intended use (e.g. tempo run, recovery run). Thirty-seven runners participated in this study. They ran for 12 min at a self-selected speed while being queried every 30 s about the ride qualities of the shoe. Ride qualities were firmness, awareness, yield, energy return, ground feel, weight, sound level, and speed. Runners evaluated four unique running shoes in addition to their native shoe. Multidimensional scaling was used to reduce dimensionality and to visualise and interpret ride qualities. The results indicated that ratings of yield and energy-return were associated with the primary two emergent dimensions. However, footwear purpose influenced ride quality ratings. Runners placed increased weight on the speed quality when selecting shoes for speed work or tempo runs and placed increased weight on the yield and energy return qualities for selecting shoe for long runs or recovery runs. Findings suggest footwear assessment is shaped by multiple perceptual qualities and intentions. The ride quality mean ratings remained relatively stable during each run. Future studies aiming to identify biomechanical indicators of footwear assessment should query subjective ratings of yield and energy-return.

Keywords:

• Ride
• multidimensional scaling
• footwear preference
• energy-return
• yield

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by adidas AG [AWD000151].