About Stride After 40

Gear guides for runners whose bodies have started negotiating.

The problem we're trying to solve

Running gear coverage is overwhelmingly written around the needs of young, fast, injury-free runners. That is a reasonable commercial decision and a poor fit for the largest growing segment of the sport. Masters runners — broadly, over 40 — are the fastest-growing group in road racing, and they are buying equipment against a genuinely different set of constraints: tendons that store less elastic energy, a heel fat pad that thins with age, connective tissue that takes longer to remodel after hard sessions.

Those differences change what "good" means in a running shoe. This site starts there.

How guides are researched

Every recommendation is built from four sources, in descending order of weight:

1. Peer-reviewed biomechanics and sports medicine literature, particularly anything with masters-age cohorts, which is thinner than it should be.
2. Independent laboratory measurements published by third parties — stack heights, drop, midsole durometer, weight — in preference to manufacturer marketing figures.
3. Manufacturer specifications, treated as claims rather than facts.
4. Aggregated long-term owner reports, useful for durability and fit, unreliable for anything else.

We do not test shoes ourselves, we do not accept samples, and we do not publish invented test scores. Guides are produced with AI assistance against these standards. Where the evidence is genuinely thin — and in masters-specific running research it very often is — the guide says so instead of manufacturing confidence.

What we won't publish

• Fabricated hands-on testing or invented lab scores.
• Training plans, calorie targets or weight-loss advice. We cover equipment. Programming your training is a job for a coach or physiotherapist who can see you.
• Anything framing injury or ageing as a personal failure to be pushed through.

Not medical advice. Nothing here is medical advice, and gear is not a treatment for pain. Persistent pain warrants a physiotherapist or doctor, not a new pair of shoes.