Supershoes have taken road running by storm. Records have tumbled and history books have been rewritten by the introduction of carbon plates inside supercritical midsoles. On the trails, it’s a slightly different story. While many brands have off-road supershoes, there’s a feeling that none has quite nailed it. And this has led one enterprising ultrarunner to an innovative solution: putting a trail outsole on a road supershoe.
‘It still feels like the trail world is catching up to the progress made in the world of road running in terms of the shoe technology,’ says Robbie Britton, a world-class ultra-distance coach and the second-fastest Briton over 24 hours. ‘With the road supershoes, you can feel the difference often from the first step, whereas I don’t know if there is a trail shoe that has got that quite right yet.’
Britton describes himself as a ‘strong responder’ to supershoes, having worn them for various road-based ultra events. He’s also someone who, in the past, has opted for road shoes over trail shoes. ‘I have historically taken my road shoes to adventurous places, such as using an Adizero Adios on the Highland Fling Arahi 8: Hokas stability shoe is back to form UTMB, running a mountain vertical kilometre in a pair of Asics Piranhas or using the New Balance Zante to cross Bulgaria,’ he says. ‘If the trail is right, a road shoe can be the perfect bit of kit for the challenge – but it comes down to the runner as well.’
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‘In general, I think that road shoes are better designed than trail shoes,’ he says. ‘That’s no surprise given the amount of research and budget that will go into the larger section of a running companies’ overall picture. We might see trail running as huge, especially in ultrarunning, where road comes a distant second to trail in terms of popularity. But in the wider running world, it’s all about those road kicks.’
That said, he concedes that there are certain types of off-road running that require a dedicated trail shoe. ‘On grassy fells or mud and more technical Skyrunning, there are certainly more specific footwear choices and brands that make sense,’ he says. ‘So it depends on where you’re racing and things like stack height – often a narrower base relative to higher stack height on road shoes – and how well a shoe corners, feels in the wet and if they are durable enough with a new tread to last your race.’
How to create a hybrid shoe
If you are a road shoe fan, but require a little more grip or underfoot protection for a race, another option exists: combine the midsole and upper of a road shoe with the outsole of a trail shoe. This is what Britton opted for – and he says that the process is fairly straightforward.
‘You can go to any cobbler and ask them if they can do it,’ he says. ‘I used one that works with Vibram soles in Turin [Britton lives in Italy], as I know the quality and durability of the sole is going to be there. But I know that places like Lancashire Shoe Repairs in the UK have done a great service in this regard for years.’
How much does it cost to re-sole a running shoe?
Re-soling a running shoe isn’t cheap, but it’s also not ruinously expensive: Britton says that it cost him 70 Euros (£60). ‘Different shoes might pose different challenges to a cobbler, but certainly, if you’re looking at an older pair of road shoes that you want to bring some more life to, it’s actually a pretty smart way to save some money and reincarnate a pair of running shoes.’
In terms of the running experience, Britton says that it’s ‘not too dissimilar to how they feel on the road, but the main changes are the introduction of more technical ground and the change in gradients’. So a shoe that was great for a road marathon, for example, might not be a good choice if the the heel cup starts to play up if you run on steeper terrain.
For Britton, it was simply a matter of taking a road shoe he loved – the first edition of the Nike Alphafly – and putting a trail outsole on it. ‘In fairness, the Alphafly does have a decent footprint in terms of width and my running still means that I hit the ground with a protected part of the sole, whereas a heel striker might destroy those in a few miles on a hard trail.’
This isn’t an idle experiment for Britton, either. He used a Vaporfly with a Vibram lite outsole for the majority of the 2024 Leadville 100, where he finished sixth. He says that he’ll continue to experiment in future.
‘I keep trying to find the perfect trail shoe and I don’t think that it exists, because trail covers such a wide range of terrain and activity,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a pair of the Summer running gear sale, which I’m enjoying – but the sole has quickly degraded, so I might replace that with a Vibram grip this summer. It brings extra life to a pair of shoes that are otherwise fine and could even increase their utility.’
Interested in trying this out for yourself? Britton has some final words of advice. ‘I would say that people should test out their own shoes on some grassy trails or dirt roads before taking the plunge in a race,’ he says. ‘You could even go on Vinted to get a battered pair of road shoes and work with them. I use a lot of second-hand shoes from Vinted for my road training, because I do like to just nip on the trail mid-run on a dry day – and I think that for the most part, durability aside, the shoes can be grand for it.’
