On Cloudventure review

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On Cloudventure review

I’ve never run in ON running shoes before; the expensive price of their trainers has previously put me off. The main features of the shoe are the technical mesh upper, and of course the iconic ON ‘pods’ on the sole of the shoe.

These shoes are neutral, lightweight (225g), and have a fairly low heel drop of 6mm. So far, I’ve worn them for easy long trail runs and 1km+ reps on forest paths, and I’m going to give a slightly controversial opinion when I say I was disappointed with them.

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Everything about these shoes, from the packaging (see below) to the material, says quality. The durability of these shoes (thus far) is amazing!

The mesh upper is breathable, yet not too thin, and I felt like my feet were well protected, and the sole has hardly worn down after multiple high impact runs.

Superb grip 

The grip of this shoe was probably my favourite part of them. While running in extremely slippy and muddy conditions, and down steep hills, I didn’t have an issue what so ever with losing my footing or sliding, etc.

This is down to the Missiongrip outsole combined with the zig-zag traction pattern. The ‘pods’ also acted as a good shock absorber when jumping down short drops, and I felt little impact on my knees.

Comfort & fit

Although more of a personal preference, I really like the coral colour of these trail shoes, and also the reflective detailing.

As mentioned at the start, I was disappointed in these shoes, and would not get them again. I’m not sure whether this is because of the high expectations I had of them, but to put it simply, I didn’t find them anywhere near as nice to run in in comparison to my usual shoes.

Love the colour 

If I’m being honest, the main issue I had with these shoes was that I didn’t find them comfy. At first, I put this down to the fact they needed breaking in, however even after many runs, I kept finding my ankles and calves becoming very stiff and sore about halfway through my runs.

The heel support seems adequate when not wearing them, so I’m not sure which aspect of the shoe it is that is causing this. I also found these particularly narrow in the arch area and ended with blisters on the arches of both feet after a recent run, however, the toe box is plentily wide.

updated 2 Feb 2023

I found that my running felt much less ‘fluid’. This was caused by the ‘pods’ on the bottom of the shoe.

Although very lightweight, I found these incredibly chunky and my heel lift at the back of my stride and knee lift at the front significantly decreased, making my stride length a lot shorter; it almost felt like I was having to put extra effort in just to run with the same stride as usual.

Laces 

This was more of a minor and easily fixable detail, but I found the laces very thin and ended up knotting them multiple times to ensure they didn’t come undone.