Evolution of perceived footwear comfort over a prolonged running session

• The perceived overall footwear comfort decreased over prolonged trail running at race speed.
• The change in overall footwear comfort therefore indicated a clinically relevant deterioration in footwear comfort over time.
• This decrease was not proportional to time and became significant only after 44 min of running or 7.8 km.
• Judgement based on perception could then be skewed by fatigue independently of the actual footwear comfort.

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to investigate the subjective perception of overall footwear comfort over a prolonged running session.MethodsTen runners performed two similar sessions consisting of a 13-km trail run (5 laps of 2.6 km) as fast as possible. The overall footwear comfort was evaluated before running and at the end of each lap with a 150-mm visual analogic scale, as well as speed, heart rate and rate of perceived exertion.ResultsThe results showed that both overall footwear comfort and speed decreased consistently during the run session, and significantly after 44 min of running (i.e. the 3rd lap). It could be hypothesized that the deterioration of overall footwear comfort was explained by mechanical and energetical parameter changes with time and/or fatigue occurring at the whole body, foot and footwear levels.ConclusionThese results justify the use of a prolonged running test for running footwear comfort evaluation.