Saturday, January 7, 2012

gear review - K-Swiss K-Ona

The K-Ona is advertised to be a multi-use shoe and not only a lightweight trainer. I bought them with the idea of using is as a racing shoe for half marathons or more.
The Looks:
the shoes are a nice piece of work, good finishing and a mighty look. They have IRONMAN written on the side, which is not of my liking, but they look quite racey.
The size:
When I bought the shoes I did not know much about how the sizing worked out on KSwiss and I ended up with shoes that are a tad too big. This is not great for two reasons, the first one is that my feet travel .5cm at sone stages, creating the potential for blisters. The second reason is that bigger shoes don't grab my feet as well as the perfect size, and my stride does not benefit fully from that.
The pros:
These shoes are like a feather, wearing them for longer (over 2 hours) runs I noticed the weight not becoming an issue, allowing me to keep good form.
Besides the light weight, they provide a great deal of mid-foot support and the material has gone over 200km of running with minimal wear.
Another test is the ability to go off road, in the few ocasions that I did take the shoes for a light off road run (park, mud, no roots, a bit of gravel) they stood very well.
The Cons:
Sizing-wise the shoes are on the wide side, so if you're like me, with thinner feet, they're not ideal.
The IM branding on the side. I'm not on for free advertising, but the prize was good and I did make a choice based on my wallet.
Even though the shoes were a bit big for me, the seams were a problem on the upper part of my feet, and the couple of runs I did without socks, the result was not great.

So, not an ideal start for K-Swiss and Valentino. The multi-use shoest turned out to be the plan B trainers. However, with time I started to venture more and more miles into them, and the last 3 hours run in the rain I did I did with my KOnas, and they responded. I am a happy customer.

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, the IM on the side is not that great, but otherwise nice-looking shoes. Love when light shoes work out, sometimes that's not the case. For narrower feet, I'd suggest the New Balance 890s.

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  2. I tried on a pair on at a marathon expo last year they just didnt feel right. Hope ur training is going well you must be closing in now and getting some good weeks in!

    D

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