Category: Clothing

Update – due to a very polite request from the manufacturer, we’ve removed the images from this article. The shoes pictures were pre-production models, and while the photos were found in the public domain, they aren’t representative of the final product.

 

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A few days ago, an Instagram photo from chief Weeple Dave showed us our first glimpse of the now infamous “Hobie Shoe”. It was a very aggressive looking racing flat shoe, with a medium tread and what looked like a little support in the arch, with some rope grips.

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It looked great – but clearly designed for the fast, elite racer in mind – there’s little support, little padding – it’s just a bare bones shoe, and if you look at the lacing, it was clearly unfinished (or *really* minimal!)

Three more models are starting to pop up.

Firstly – also on instagram from Mr Huckle – we have a neon and black sneak that looks like a fairly normal sneaker, with a good level of grip, also “Duraride” branding on the arch (which also looks perfectly suited to the ropes), and duragrip branding on the toe protection. Overall though, his has a much bulkier look to it, and I would expect this shoe to be targetted more to the mass market of trail running, or new racer. This is certainly not a minimalist or “fast” shoe. It does look like it has a similar, medium level of grip.

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Two more shoes popped up from another Spartan racer on one of the facebook groups dedicated to Spartan, and look to be two entirely different shoes again.

Firstly, we have a blue and yellow and red shoe that appears to sit somewhere in the middle of the others – this has a neat looking speedlacing system, the same rope grips, but was reported as having a fairly firm feel to the foot. The toe box looks protected, and has an interesting skid plate to it, and another good level of grip … it’s hard to say if the upper is mesh, and will drain well – it looks like it’s close to the other two shoes.

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Lastly, we have what looks to be the casual, non race version of all of the above.

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This shoe looks to be the least like a “race” shoe, and more like a traditional off roader. A much more substantial upper, that looks padded and apart from a space above the toes, it doesn’t look like it will drain as well, and the mid sole and sole look a lot less suited to running through mud, and more like it’s only ever going to see grass, and maybe a little bit of gravel … no rope grips, and doesn’t look like much flexibility.

 

So there you have it – four new offerings from Reebok showing up in the Obstacle Course Racing world – indicating these are the future of the Reebok range in the Spartan World. Love these particular shoes or not – you can’t deny that Reebok are doing it right – we’ve got minimalist, super light shoes with aggressive tread, through to heavy duty “weekend warrior” shoes in distinctive designs and styles. I for one am happy to see the rope grips appear, as this is somewhere Inov-8 has lacked, and is likely straight from the world of Crossfit, where rope climbing is fairly standard.