Saucony Progrid Omni 9

After retiring my Mississauga shoes, and running for the past ten years in Saucony Ride's (the next version of the Trigon series of Saucony shoes), I've changed shoes.

I was told that my foot's kinda flat and so didn't need so much instep cushioning. The Ride 3 shoe has a larger instep. For those of us with flatter feet, we only need the cushioning somewhat lower and a larger base. The Ride 3 has a thinner in the mid section than the Omni 9 and has a higher instep as well. The Omni 9 is wider in the middle and so has better support for flatter footed people.

Here's the shoe:

And here's another, blurrier, picture:

Now here's the old Ride 3, the Mississauga Marathon shoe, compared to the Omni 9. You can see the deeper instep on the Ride 3 (the older dirtier shoe on the bottom of the picture).

The Omni 9 has a flatter, broader base, but still an instep protection. I actually felt my instep lifted up by this one which is strange since I didn't feel the instep so much on the Ride 3, though it's higher. The close-up below highlights the difference even more.

I believe that this shoe got rid of my knee problems and hopefully the Omni 9 shoe is the one for me. It feels different, but I trust the guys at the Running Room and so I'm going to give it a shot. I'm going to run the Streetsville Bread and Honey 15K this weekend with this shoe but I'll know long before that race if I'm comfortable in it.