Tag Archives: New Balance Zante

Brooks Pure Flow 6

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Goodnight! What the hell were you thinking Brooks?? The Pure Flow 6 is easily as bad as the Saucony’s Kinvara 6. I gave my pair to the local clothes closet charity. Its like running in clogs! How do you go from making a wonderfully fantabulous shoe like the Ghost 10 to an absolute shoe wreck like the Pure Flow 6? It’s not that much of an exaggeration to say its like running in a wooden shoe. Its supposed to be “lightweight” and it comes in at 9.4 ounces. Yes I have a kitchen scale.
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So after I gave them away, tonight I ran in their competitor from New Balance, the Zante. I lucked out and found a pair of the originals in a shoe shop in Canada. They come in at 7.8 ounces. THAT’S lightweight. And soft…. you have incredible oneness with the ground, but really cushioned. I hadn’t appreciated them fully until I’d wasted my money on the Brooks. You can’t ask any more out of a shoe.
[Sunday 4/22 update. Did the Sunday morning “long run” in the Zante for an hour. With a gun to my head I couldn’t have done that in the Brooks. Feet felt even better after the run.]

New Balance Zante

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Through some bit of incredible luck I was able to obtain the original New Balance Zante off of EBay from a Canadian shoe store for $54 American. That color is the version I got. Sure its ugly, but who cares. Really. The version 3 was just coming out and how I was able to go back 2 generations was beyond me. I’d heard a lot about this shoe from YouTube reviews from a couple of years ago. They had made it sound like the lightest and cushiest shoe ever. I was kicking myself for not knowing about it then (I invariably come into things late in the game).

I took it out for the maiden voyage a couple of weeks ago and was decidedly underwhelmed. It wasn’t very cushy at all, and if it was 3 ounces lighter than my pet Ghost, it was hard to tell. I had weighed it myself right out of the box, 7.6 ounces, the lightest shoe I have. Point 2 ounces lighter than the Hoka Clayton even. But the Zante version 2 seems like the better shoe, even if it is an ounce heavier at 8.8. It comes with a very unusual insole. A thicker, perforated foam that is somewhat stiffer than usual. Light weight too, it comes in at a surprising .5 of an ounce, compared to a Hoka insole at .8 ounces.

It has that rubber outsole running the length of the shoe that I had first experienced a year ago on the New Balance 1080 v6. Its going to last forever. A lot of yahoo’s on the internet think the version 2 was a step backwards, I disagree. The version 2 is a soft shoe. I don’t understand how or why, but that’s what it seems to me. I took the original on a Sunday morning ‘long run’ earlier today. By the end of an hour I was okay with it, but boy for the first half it really felt like my feet, knees and legs were taking a pounding. I should do the same next week with the version 2 to compare. I would almost guarantee it will be softer.

I’m just waiting to see if I get past a “break in” period that causes me to fall in love with the Zante. Until then, its a good shoe, if not great.

[EBay is an interesting experience. I almost got a pair of the original Hoka Clifton. At $55 dollars I was outbid for this used shoe. I wasn’t going to pay more than that, even if it was “hardly used”. It is impossible to find a new/unused Clifton. That was a legendary shoe also. I was able to find the original Clayton at the Hoka site itself.]