Noah Davis: I’m currently running in my 10th and 11th pair of Saucony Endorphin Speed 2 shoes. I bought my first in Summer 2021 soon after they hit the market. At the time, I took a bit of a flier, moving from my longtime staple Brooks, which were suddenly too narrow for my age-induced widening feet, to a new pair that came recommended by a Brooklyn Running Company salesperson. By the time I finished my jog home, I was hooked.Â
For me, the Speed 2 was the perfect shoe: durable enough for longer runs; supportive enough for everyday use; responsive enough for speed work and fartleks. It’s a workhorse of a shoe that I have bought every 250 miles or so even now that its successors the Speed 3 and Speed 4 have entered the arena.Â
The running shoe game is a racket, invented by Nike, adopted by everyone. Manufacturers make changes — usually a minor facelift, sometimes a major overhaul — in order to be able to release a new edition, encouraging the consumer to do more consumption at a higher price point. (The book Born to Run offers good insight on this Swooshified origin story.)Â
So yeah, ignore, ignore, ignore the hype. If you find a shoe you like, buy it again and again and again until you can’t anymore. This requires extra effort. BK Running Co. quickly ran out of inventory, so I went direct to Saucony. But they eventually ran low, too, pushing the Speed 3 instead, so I turned to Amazon. I don’t love this pivot, but c’est la vie. The available colorway options got uglier, the retailers more, um, diverse, the price discounts random. The Speed 2, however, kept arriving at my doorstep.
This is not an argument to purchase fewer pairs of running shoes! If anything, casual runners run for too long on the same pair of shoes. If you feel flat, feel pain, feel like your legs are more tired than they were last month after the same effort, it’s time to get another pair (of the same shoes). When you find a shoe you like, buy two pairs at a time and rotate them every other run. Sure, this feels a tad profligate, but each pair will actually last longer comparatively as the foam has more time to recover between runs. Besides, it could be worse financially. You could be a cyclist.Â
As I’m writing this, the only Speed 2 size 10.5 I can find is at a Dick’s Sporting Goods in Massapequa. They do not deliver. Google Maps says it’s roughly 10 hours on foot. I think I can beat that time.
Noah Davis is a runner and co-founder of Three Point Four Media.
Likewise. I have extremely flat feet, so started wearing Brooks Beasts years and years ago. They have a firm last. Their models have changed and one of them didn’t work with me but I’m now on my fifth or sixth Brooks Dyad. As for life of shoe, I used to eke out 1,000 kms or more but realized I was breaking down. My daughter suggested 500 or 600 kms and now I turn them over around then.
Oh hell yeah. I've even resorted to Google shopping (!) to hunt down ES2s. Still have pairs in the Reverie and Icon Pack colorways on ice. There's a reason they're a cult favorite!