By Les Tan/Red Sports
Kelvin Ko (right), who is the Ekin product specialist for Nike Singapore, holds the Nike Flyknit Air Max. It is the first performance running shoe to break the $300 mark and retails at $349. With me at the session was Shi Tianyun (centre), the fashion writer for Her World Plus. (Photo 1 courtesy of Ng Peiru)
Nike Store, Orchard Central, Monday, January 27, 2014 – “How many running shoes are you going to get?!”
That was my wife’s first reaction when I told her I was going down to the Nike store at Orchard Central for a media session with Kelvin Ko, the Nike Ekin product specialist.
You see, in the last one month, I had just bought one pair of the Nike Flyknit Lunar 1+ model and a pair of the New Balance 1260V2. So I said, with as much conviction as possible, “Gino says that it is good to have more than one pair of running shoes because it forces you to run differently each.” (Gino Ng is an ex-national triathlete and physiotherapist.)
Happily for me, Nike gave me a pair of the Nike Flyknit Air Max shoes to try out. The one thing that stuck in my head was when Kelvin said that the upper for the Flyknit Air Max is stitched from a single thread of polyester yarn. As a result, Nike can’t produce as many of these shoes as they usually do other models, according to Kelvin.
Because I’m flat footed and have feet as wide as frogs do, I’m usually restricted to what models of shoes I can wear. I’ve never worn an Air Max shoe before.
Being all of 45 years of age and not wanting to be left behind by all these young people, I said, “I run very slowly. Wait for me, ok?” Shi Tianyun, the fashion writer at Her World Plus, gave me this “I don’t believe you” look.
We did a 1.4km loop along Orchard Road, which saw us head towards the Istana Park and back. I kept looking down to see if the shoes were still there because I couldn’t feel the upper around my feet. True enough, running in this pair made me feel quite different from my other two pairs. “So this is what Air Max feels like.”
“Just don’t run on trails. You might burst the Max Air unit,” said Kelvin. “Also, I wouldn’t do long runs in those as they get heavy.”
(I didn’t really heed that advice when I snuck into the Green Corridor for a short stretch on a 7km test run a couple of days later, but I was careful about where I ran to avoid bursting the Air Max unit.)
After the first loop on Orchard Road, I said to Kelvin, “Hey, you promised me 3km!” So off we went again. I should have kept my big mouth shut because this time, without the three girls in tow, Mr Kelvin ‘Half-Ironman’ Ko (he’s done two) upped the pace.
I was never so happy to see a red man signal at each traffic junction on the route.
Shoe Specs At a Glance
One-piece upper with Nike Flyknit construction
Upper made from polyester yarn and fed into a proprietary knitting machine
Full-length Air Max unit
Translucent Waffle outsole
Weight: 12.8 ounces (362.8 grams) for a men’s U.S. size 10
More photos next page
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