Womens Nike Free Rn Commuter 2017 Running Shoes Review
Due to the extreme flex and compliant nature of the Free sole technology, the Free RN mimics the experience of barefoot running since the foot is allowed to flex naturally with the ground topography.
According to Nike, the Free line was developed after learning that Stanford athletes were trading barefoot on the golf course.
Therefore the flex of the sole has been designed to specifically mimic the biomechanics of a barefoot running feel.
The upshot is a shoe that feels natural on the feet and and is a joy to run in. I tested the Gratis RN on different surfaces, including forest, basic trail, and asphalt.
Nike Costless RN General Info
When I start laced them up, my outset impression was that the Free RN feels more than like a slipper than a running shoe.
In a manner, information technology reminded me of the La Sportiva Vertical 1000, which feels a bit similar a climbing shoe in the style it wraps around your pes.
The Free RN sole is very flexible, in this regard I compared it to a minimalist shoe, such as the Inov-8 Roclite (I run with the 285'southward occasionally). Nevertheless, unlike the 285's, the Complimentary RN has cushioning along the pes.
The Free RN weights in at 8.55 ounces (men'southward size 10), which is lightweight, in-line with minimalist running shoes.
The extreme flexibility of the Free RN derives non but from the flexible sole, but also from the overall uppers and heel design. Dissimilar many running shoes, the heel of the Free RN is not stiff since there's no plastic heel cup.
Instead the heel is fabric and foam, with a last running from the top of the heel to the midsole.
The shoe is then flexible that y'all tin can even pull the Free RN on like a slipper if the laces are tied. This complete design defines a running feel quite shut to barefoot running on grass.
I run into the Free RN (and associated Nike Gratuitous shoe designs) as an important part of the development of the minimalist and barefoot running shoes pattern from the past decade, which take included notable shoe designs from companies such as Inov-8, Merrell (http://www.merrell.com/en/barefoot/), and the Vibram Five Fingers (https://u.s.a..vibram.com/shop/fivefingers/men/) line, where the goal was to offer project for running over different surfaces, while allowing the feeling of barefoot running.
This often meant reduced cushioning, and required some time for your feet to strengthen, since the minimalist shoes generally offer less back up than traditional running shoes. This was largely due to the materials used and the sole blueprint.
In club to mimic the barefoot feeling, sole designs focused on being very thin in order to reduce sole stiffness, thereby allowing better compliance between sole flexing and pes flexing.
Therefore, the loftier flexibility of the sole came at the expense of minimal cushioning.
Now, this would be ok for soft surfaces, but on hard surfaces it would be more uncomfortable and for me personally, would reduce the distances I could run, even though I very much like the barefoot feeling of running.
Transitioning to a minimalist shoe would besides accept some time, since a runner would need to build up their foot strength, or risk injury if they went from a loftier cushioned shoe to a minimalist and decided to run a marathon without allowing time to get used to the minimalist design.
This is where I see the interesting value that the Free RN brings, it combines the natural barefoot feeling with cushioning.
The combination of high sole flexibility with a light weight design and cushioning means you tin really use the Gratuitous RN equally a general running shoe and maintain the barefoot running feeling.
At first I didn't accept a lot of exceptions running on the Free RN on asphalt, as this is where my past experiences with minimalist shoes have come up upwardly shot.
Nonetheless, I've been quite impressed past the ability of the Free RN to cushion on asphalt while maintaining freedom of motion.
On the trail the Free RN works well if you're on a normal trail, simply you can almost guarantee that small rocks will get wedged in-between the openings of the sole, and additionally you'll feel larger rocks as you run on them.
Running over a soft forrest floor is a squishy experience, and at that place's basically no ability to terminate from sliding given the lack of treads on the sole (even so, this was fully expected).
Nike Free RN Sole Unit
The softness of the Gratuitous RN sole makes the running experience a scrap like walking on soft jump grass or fresh snow, in that you feel the ground below your foot, but information technology'south very soft and inviting.
Nike Costless RN – Sole
Of form, since information technology is a shoe and not snow, the shoe moves with y'all while y'all run. Due to the softness of the sole and the lack of stiff treads, the Costless RN is not an platonic shoe for mountains or climbing upwards steep trails.
You can run with the Free RN on moderate trails, just it's more than suited to flat ground including concrete and cobblestone. The softness of the sole will likely non exist durable enough for excessive abuse on hard trails.
Of course, due to the high sole flexibility, you actually wouldn't want to use the Gratis RN on hard trail adventures. Since the sole is made of foam, there is cushioning along the full sole, making it flexible and shock absorbing.
The flexibility of the sole is due to the engineered cut patterns, which run along the sole in a triangular design (Nike calls it auxetic design).
Cutting material is an easy way to build flexibility into a shoe sole, and may often be found in the sole region, but not ever in a place where a person tin see it easily.
Basically it's an piece of cake way to engineer dissimilar regions of bending stiffnesses using 1 material, as opposed to trying to build a sole from multiple materials of dissimilar stiffnesses (which would also be much more expensive from a production viewpoint).
For example, the Salomon S-LAB X Alp Carbon GTX mountaineering kicking (http://xalp.salomon.com/de/) includes a carbon chassis layer in the sole design, which includes cutting in the material along the sole, which gives good torsional rigidity forth with flexibility forth the foot length.
This is also how you tin can use a light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation cutter to brand a wooden tie (http://world wide web.thingiverse.com/matter:707915). Also, I've seen cuts engineered into Mammut trail shoes in order to localize insole flexibility. The point is, you engineer the desired fabric flexibility even with a stiff base material.
Now, equally compared to those examples, the advantage of the Free RN is that the cutting regions ascertain high flexibility in the foam of the sole.
The triangular pattern ways that in that location is an even distribution in the stiffness reduction (due to the cutting lines) in the iii primary directions of the triangular cut regions, which allows the sole to flex forth the natural ways your foot deforms over the ground.
So, overall the sole is a nice balance betwixt price and flexibility. I'm a big fan of flexible soles, particularly if they flex comfortably at the brawl of my pes.
I take found that if the flex bespeak of a shoe is too far forward, toward the tip of my toes, that it increases the risk of my toe nails being injured and falling off afterward distances beyond 30 km. So, overall I've quite happy with the flex profile of the Free RN and the softness of the sole.
Nike Gratis RN Upper Info
The Flymesh uppers are colorful, breathable, and flexible. The design lines are clean and free of excess material. I don't run into any obvious stress points that would atomic number 82 to premature failure of the uppers construction.
The lacing organisation works well to tighten over my pes, simply I take had the laces come undone on a few occasions. It would be ideal to replace the laces with 1 that grip better.
Nike Free RN – Top
The Flywire cable arrangement loops through the laces and then wraps around the sides of the pes to secure it to the midsole of the shoe. I've found the Flywire to work well in securing my foot in both the Free RN and the Vomero 11 shoes.
I'm mostly not a fan of lacing systems where the laces loop through a nylon material, since I accept found on some past shoes that failure could occur over time due to the friction of the laces against the looping cloth connecting to the uppers.
If the laces go through nylon to be secured to the shoe, then over time the lace may cutting through the nylon.
Still, this seems to be mitigated in the blueprint, since the Flywire cables appear to exist made of a potent and loftier tensile strength material, and with a hard surface, should minimize friction article of clothing between the Flywire and the laces over fourth dimension.
The advantage is that the laces are directly in contact with the Flywire cables that so wrap around the foot. This, combined with the soft uppers actually allows for a slipper-similar experience and very good conformity between the foot and the shoe.
Given the softness of the uppers cloth, there is non a lot of construction to the shoe with regards to torsion of the foot.
Therefore, you lot can look some move of your foot in the shoe when negotiating technical trail features, just it'south not an result when running on normal surfaces.
Nike Costless RN Conclusions
Lite, flexible and cushioned. Those are the words that come to my mind when thinking of the Free RN. The Free RN is a fun shoe, a pair y'all pick up for a quick run and might additionally wear in the city on a warm summer day.
My foot doesn't experience constrained in the Costless RN. Information technology'southward a shoe you can imagine calling your comfortable shoe to relax in and enjoy life. Across running, the Free RN is a wonderful lifestyle shoe.
The assuming styling also make it a nice choice for hipster style remixing, as they pair nicely with greyness slacks or CEP running socks.
Overall I like the Free RN. Information technology provides a running feel close to barefoot, but offers cushioning on hard surfaces.
The combination of high sole flexibility and cushioning makes the Free RN more than usable than the other minimalist shoes that I have feel with.
I would dear to have the same sole flexibility and cushioning in a trail or mountain oriented shoe. All the same, for city and non-trail running the Gratis RN volition be a skilful choice for me.
For me, an expanded toe box book and laces with improve grip would be two areas of improvement for the future.
For most people, it won't be a shoe to choose for demanding runs up a mount or grueling marathons. Yet, for a 5k, 10k, and peradventure 20k run, it'due south a nice blueprint.
We give thanks the prissy people at Nike for sending us a pair of Free RN to exam. This did not influence the effect of the review, written after running more than than 50 miles in them.
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Source: https://www.runningshoesguru.com/2016/07/nike-free-rn-review/
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