Welcome to Brand Breakdown, a series of comprehensive yet easy-to-digest guides to your favorite companies, with insights and information you won’t find on the average About page.
Back in 1964, Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight teamed up to create Blue Ribbon Sports, a sneaker brand that has grown immensely from its humble roots into what we know today as Nike. Bowerman and Knight initially sold Onitsuka Tiger shoes that they imported from Japan. After tweaking the outsole in a waffle iron, Bowerman experimented with athletes at the University of Oregon to figure out what worked on running shoes and what just didn’t. Nike was officially born in 1971 and now holds eight registered patents on its designs. While Nike pushes forward some of the most innovative and technical gear in the sportswear market today, its bread and butter are running shoes.
Bowerman was a track and field coach for 23 years at the University of Oregon and Knight was one of his runners, so the two worked together to design sneakers that would help track athletes shine during competitions — and feel good on their days off, too. Bowerman tinkered with shoes to make the spikes perfect for his athletes, using them as guinea pigs for new models. One of the first official sneakers was the Tiger Cortez. What was considered revolutionary from a performance standpoint has now become a universally recognized lifestyle sneaker. Nike has continued to push the boundaries of running with new technologies and materials every year.
Nike’s come a long way from putting outsoles in the waffle iron, and the brand now boasts a plethora of sneakers that are built to help you tackle speed, performance, agility and more. Whether you’re new to running or can rattle off your top three sneaker models and numbers, this is the complete list of Nike’s current running shoes.
Road Shoes
Renew Arena
The Nike Renew Arena look bouncy thanks to an exaggerated Renew foam midsole. You’ll find traction along the bottom only where you need it. This model comes in four colors.
