The next time you travel on the MTR, look down. The likelihood is that most of the passengers are wearing trainers. Designed for athletes and other sporty types, they have been adopted by nearly everyone, making us the most comfortably shod humans in history.
While humans have undoubtedly treasured footwear of some kind since we evolved to become bipedal, the fact that footwear materials tend not to fossilise makes their history tough to trace. The earliest known fossilised shoes belonged to Otzi the Iceman, the mountain hunter found frozen in Austria’s Tyrolean Alps in 1991. Even then, it seems footwear fashion was alive and well.
His mountain shoes, lined with fur and cushioned with grass, were made of three kinds of leather: from a bear, a deer and a cow. 01:03 Chinese men rush to buy shoes, damaging escalator Innovation in shoe technology has progressed rapidly since then, and for mere mortal joggers like me it can be a bit hard to stay on top of. Gone are the days when you simply asked for a wide-fitting size 10.
Shoe hype for the world’s estimated 20 million trail runners brings intimidating choices of high to low heel-to-toe drops, deep or shallow lugs, carbon fibre midsole plates, gillie lacing and mesh uppers. As trail runner Jess Keefe wrote in : “When it comes to my regular-human running routine, wading through a sea of techy acronyms and proprietary foam names is exhausting and breeds self-doubt.” A large number of these amazing tech innovations are in tru.