Newton's third law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That's a law of physics and occurs no matter what shoe you're using. But what if there was a way to maximize that equal and opposite reaction, such that less of the ground reaction force is wasted, and is instead maximized to propel you into your next stride? The first time I heard of this concept was in 2001, when one of my high school XC teammates announced that she had heard of Nike producing a shoe that was supposed to bounce you into your next stride (for perspective, this girl grew up to be a cyclist and and engineer, so she probably loves gear and technology, but in high school, none of us knew anything about shoes). Unfortunately, the Nike Shox turned out to just have some stupid spring shaped heel made out of EVA and not even be a real running shoe (nothing wrong with EVA, as most shoes use it, but this shoe didn't do what my friend had hoped it would). The next time I heard about it was the infamous Spira shoes, which put actual springs in the forefoot and ignited way more controversy on LetsRun than...well, actually everything ignites controversy on LetsRun, so nevermind. Then a few of my friends started wearing Newton. These were real runners who needed real running shoes; runners who weren't about to settle for gimmicky nonsense. Runners who wanted to do everything to maximize their performance, but weren't about to resort to banned technology (I still have no idea whether those Spiras were actually banned or not). Well, after hearing enough of them rave about these shoes and getting several emails from readers asking if I had tried Newtons, I figured it was time to try out the Newton Distance.
