adidas adizero Evo SL
Running Shoe History 1980's.
To this point running shoes were evolving. Runners were demanding more from their running shoe. As discussed running was growing as an activity. Boston, New York and Berlin were starting to take shape due to the demand. The running shoe brands were innovating to service the demand. The first midsoles started appearing in the early 1970's. Nike would change the game using the upper.
Let's back up just a bit. The running shoe was a fairly basic shoe before the end of the 1970's. There was a shape to the running shoe created by the last. A fabricated foot shape that creates uniformity in shoe making. You can repeat the shoe over and over. Next there was the upper. If you look at the older running shoes they all had something in common. There was a strip of leather on top of the vamp (forefoot) that ran down the center from the eye stay (Where the laces start) to the toe. This is where the upper was stitched together. There were two pieces to the upper and they needed to be sewn together in two places. At the heel and across the top of the shoe over your toes. They used this piece of leather to secure the vamp but also to hide the stitch line. Finally, the upper was glued to a rubber outsole or in some cases a thin layer of sheet EVA. We'll come back to this when we talk about minimalism in a later post.
Leading up to the 1976 Olympics Nike was was working with their athletes to build a faster more comfortable training shoe and spike. They developed the first board lasted running shoe uppers doing away with the stitch down the middle of your forefoot. If you put a board at the bottom of the shoe you could stitch the upper to the board and then glue the board to the outsole. This would change running shoes forever. Look down at your running shoes today. Have you ever wondered how that light, breathable upper is so relatively seamless and melds perfectly with the midsole? Well it's because Nike figured out how to put a board down.
In 1978 Nike took it a step further. They introduced the Tailwind. This shoe had the first version of Nike Air. This would start the cushioning revolution where every brand would develop their own midsole technology. There was another company innovating with midsole technology, Brooks. Brooks had two shoes Vantage and Villanova. Both had a midsole. It was in the early 80's where Brooks would make the first ever commercially available Compression Molded EVA midsole (cmeva). This midsole was lighter more uniform (Sheet eva at the time might have dead spots) and it molded into a better midsole form. The Brooks Vantage would be the first shoe introduced to the public using a cmeva midsole.
One of the eye opening experiences in running shoes is a visit to a mold shop. There is huge expense in the engineering and chemical science going on at the mold shop factory. All of this dates back to the 1970's and early 80's when Nike, Brooks and others were trying to service the demand. They have been doing it ever since.
