It is no secret that older SUP athletes are plagued with chronic injuries including back injuries, hip injuries, or injuries to the lower extremities. In many cases these injuries were sustained in other sports or activities and they are the reason why these athletes are paddling in the first place. As a result, one of the complaints we hear from SUP race athletes is that they do not do much cross training because of their other injuries. We also hear that cross training activities like cycling take up too much time.

It is also no secret that few people are more broken than your trusted Riding Bumps authors Roch Frey, Paul Huddle, and Matt Wright. Roch frey is the proud owner of a double hip replacement,  a previous ACL injury, osteoarthritis in his knee, and a current meniscal tear that is one step away from becoming surgical. Paul Huddle hobbles along on two knees that are destined for replacement and (until now anyway) could not string together two days running in a row. Matt Wright is a complete musculoskeletal disaster with a hip that needs replacement, three knee surgeries, SI issues from a previous bike accident, a rotator cuff repair, and a recurrent achilles injury.

This background is important to know because the moon boot, nursing shoe look-a-likes pictured at the top of this web page allow us to run for our paddle cross training workouts – even with all of our lifetime of accumulated injuries. To make a long story short we joined the numbers of ultradistance runners and aging athletes who switched to Hoka brand running shoes. You can do your research on the pros and cons of these shoes and decide for yourself whether or not they are right for you. For us – we are sold.

What does this all have to do with  prone paddle or SUP race training?  Everything if you want to maximize your cross training time, you like to run, and you have not been able to find shoes that allow you to run without pain. Even if youare not painful when you run, in our experience, we feel that we are less “beat up” after a run and we are better able to recover from our running sessions with these shoes.

Given that these shoes are such a radical departure from traditional running shoes we expect a large number of questions regarding our experience. To keep the emails to a minimum, here are a few of the questions we know we will get (and you should probably ask) answered ahead of time.

Question: don’t you feel stupid running around in these things? Initially, we have to say we did. After a while though you dont even notice them. All in all we look a whole lot less stupid than paddling with a no shirt and a heart rate monitor.

Question: is there any chance that you can run without pain because you are endurance junkies, basically addicted to heroin, and running just makes the pain go away? Although we resemble that remark, this is unlkely. We have been running off and on for years with pain. These things are different.

Question: Is there any chance you are jumping on the bandwagon too early with these things? Very much so. It is certainly possible that in a few years we will find that running on big fat cushy soles will have some untoward effect but we are 100% willing to take that risk. We are more worried that our curmudgeonly reputation for scoffing at new fangled tech will be tarnished. Oh well.

Question: What about that whole minimalist running thing? We never got on that bandwagon. In our experience, the minimalist running bit worked great for folks who weigh next to nothing and have perfect running form. Everyone else got hurt. Ooops.

Question: isn’t it irresponsible to recommend running to people with chronic injuries? We are not recommending anything here. This is a testimonial. Please consult your physician before you go out and do something stupid. This blog post is also not science in any way shape or form. It is just a testimonial from three guys would could not otherwise run.

Question: There is no way you can possibly run fast in those things. The cushioning has to absorb all of your speed. No? We disagree. We do not have science to prove it but in distance running we disagree. If you are talking about sprinting speed – we do not know. These days – we are not sprinting. We are cross training for our paddling.

Question: Isn’t it true that Paula Newby-Fraser refuses to be seen in public with Huddle when he wears his Hokas? That is true but it has nothing to do with the Hokas.