Published by Ronald on Thursday, 01 Sep 2011 15:18 EDT
In Dutch there is a saying that applies to the general population, me included, “Act normal, that’s crazy enough”. The attitude is slowly disappearing nowadays, but for me it still holds up. I do not like to act crazy or grab everyone’s attention in one way or another. I rather like just being a normal guy who happens to like running in minimal shoes. The barefoot running thing has always been a bit weird to me, especially when you see the VFF, which I still haven’t tried because they look weird and demand attention (I will try them eventually though, no worries). In this respect, the VIVOBAREFOOT Neo is perfect for me. The Neo looks like a shoe and stays in a category appearance wise that I feel is “normal”.
I apologize for taking a long time to get a proper review up of this shoe. It’s not because I didn’t have time, but I felt I couldn’t do many miles in them from the start. I am learning to run minimal and it has simply taken a few weeks to get to the point where I felt confident enough to run longer distances with these shoes. In the middle of testing them, I got the Invisible Shoes as well (which was admittedly a fun experience and I will look into those again) which set me back a week into testing the Neo.
Published by Ronald on Wednesday, 27 Jul 2011 15:44 EDT
I have wanted these shoes since I had the opportunity to test the VIVOBAREFOOT Evo at a barefoot race in Tilburg a few months ago. They felt excellent, but at that point I was still a new runner and investing such a large sum of money (160 euro) was not in my budget at that time. I kinda regret not getting them now because I could have been running in minimal shoes for the past two months instead of starting now with the VIVOBAREFOOT Neo.
It took a while to receive the shoes, so that gave me ample time to do some research. I am a worrier, and the more I found out about the VIVOBAREFOOT Neo, the more I worried. I started to wonder if this was more of a casual shoe in lieu of a running shoe. I worried: Will they be too heavy? Are they way too minimal? Will they ventilate properly with so much fabric? They market the Neo as a performance shoe which could really mean just about anything.