5 Best Max Cushion Recovery Run Shoes

We are back today with a bunch of shoes. I put this one up to the camera, but we got a bunch of shoes. We are doing a recovery running shoe roundup. I like to do this every so often to highlight my favorite shoes in a category. So if you are interested in shoe insights and training insights, like what's the point of a recovery run anyway? Well, it's to let your body recover between hard sessions because the hard sessions are where you build a lot of fitness. You are in the right place. And an even better place would be the Supple app. So Supple app is my app. It's the best buy, sell, and trade marketplace out there. And it's the best place to find not only the insights that I mentioned, but also the deals on running shoes. You can get a shoe like the Blizzy Trace, the Super Blast 3, or the Cloud Monster Hyper 3 on a great discount because somebody buys it, they don't like it that much. Maybe they run it once, they list it for under $200 and pass along some savings to a hobby jogger like you. So if that's what you're into, saving some money on running shoes and joining the best community of hobby jogger shikos out there, get in with this and enjoy today's video. Darkness. We're in the darkness today. We're in the darkness. It's backlit. You know why? Because it's Friday evening, 6 p.m. Yes, 6 p.m. What a terrible week. What a terrible week. But guess what? Friday evening, 6 p.m., terrible week. I'm still smiling. That's the one thing about me. I'm going to always smile. I've been trying to do this during my runs too because somebody told me the only way you could tell Elliot Kipchoge was in pain was because he was smiling. So anytime I've been in pain recently on my runs, I've been smiling and I'm trying it on my everyday life too. You know, tough week, smile, smile. Anyway, we are talking recovery running shoes today. It's been a while since I did one of these lists. Every so often, I like to do a top five list of some of my favorite shoes or the best shoes in a category. And this has been an interesting one because I don't do very many pure recovery runs anymore. I did one recovery run this week or a pure recovery run. It was Monday, 10 miles around an 8-20 pace. I honestly don't even remember what shoe I used for it. It was probably the Blizzy Trace, if I had to guess. But I've been doing a lot of faster miles, zone two, zone three. But these are the shoes that I've been reaching for the most for those efforts when I'm not going to be picking up the pace. Now, what I am prioritizing the most in my training right now, and I always say you got to match the shoe to the run and the type of training you're doing. What I'm prioritizing most of my training right now is just getting out the gosh dang door and getting some mileage in. Over the past four or five months, I haven't been doing super high mileage. I've just been hanging on. This week, I'm barely going to hit 100. I mean, it's going to be a miracle if I hit 100. So I've just been trying to get through it. So the type of shoe that I'm using for that, it's not the most protective, super cushioned, comfortable, slow shoe. Most of my ideal training shoes right now are faster. They have some more pep in their step. And what we've seen is that the market has evolved so much where you now have these super lightweight shoes that also offer the comfort in the cushion. So with that, these are the five shoes I am using the most for my recovery runs right now or that I enjoy the most. It was a little sad to leave off the the Nimbus. That was a hard one. Nimbus 28. I'm just not using it a lot right now. It is still a very comfortable shoe. That is a traditional, more max cushion, soft recovery shoe. So I'm going to give it an honorable mention, but it's just not in the core of what I'm going for right now. I've been using more of these bouncy, energetic, super training shoes for my recovery runs. I think a lot of people have as well. So first one up here, we have the Dynafish Xiao Nian. Why I like this for recovery mileage. Yes, it has a race foam. But it is so light. 200 grams for my size. 10.5, that's lighter than a lot of race shoes out there that it's just so easy to turn over on tired legs. Vomero Premium. I used that for a run earlier this week. That's 350 grams. That's nearly double the weight of this. I know a lot of people like that for recovery run. I'll give that another honorable mention, but it's just so hard for me to turn over. So for my recovery runs these days, I'm prioritizing the bounce, the comfort. Yes, the comfort and the cushion, but just also easy to turn over and get the legs going. That's what the Dynafish Xiao Nian has. All right. Number two, we can go from least expensive to most expensive. Well, the second least expensive shoe on my list is $180. That is crazy. So I did want to give a shout out to the MagMax here. Now, this is not a shoe that I'm running in a ton. However, for those days where I'm feeling super banged up and beat up, the MagMax still has that go to injury prevention quality. Now, thankfully, I haven't had too many days recently or at all in the past two or three months where I feel that borderline some things popping up my knee, my hip. I haven't had a lot of those. But when I do, there's only one shoe that I trust for that. And it's the MagMax. A lot of these shoes out here. I'll give you a little sneak peek here. So like the Hyperboost Edge, because they're so soft, they can have elements of weirdness to them. They make you land a certain way. You got to do this. You got to do that. The MagMax is just very stable and reliable. So for a pure recovery run, thinking about it for recovering from a marathon or recovering from a super hard workout and our body feels like it's on the edge. A lot of the time these days I am going for the Blizzy Trace. But even that is very soft. If I had to pick one shoe to be my recovery day choice, when I'm the most banged up, it's still the MagMax. And I did get a really solid long run in this about a month, a month and a half ago, 20 miles at around a 650 pace or something. So it can pick up the pace when you want it to. But it's most certainly the most at home for me for those relaxed recovery miles. Feels even slower than the MagMax OG. And I would love to see them update this with a MagMax 2 that has even more foam or just a different foam. I think I've been talking about DV8 Max. I'd love to see them do a DV8 Max that has a bottom layer of this and something super energetic up top. That would be a cool shoe. Similar to these next two shoes that we will pull here. So probably my favorite recovery running shoe at the moment is this guy, ASIC Super Blast 3, aka the Blizzy Trace. I think I've mentioned this about five or six times already in this video. It is the top dog for me right now in the Max Cushion category. Why? Lightweight, stable, comfortable. And if we're talking recovery, this takes it over a lot of the shoes out there. Something like the Dynafish. This is a little bit more Evo SL. This has more of that speed Evo SL orientation, which makes it super lightweight because they're not optimizing it for max comfort. If you take a look at the two uppers here, they've stripped back a lot of the stuff on the Dynafish, which is what makes it so awesome. With the Super Blast, it has this borderline overbuilt quality to it. I've always compared the Super Blast to the Forerunner. And interestingly enough, they just refreshed the Forerunner as well. And with the Forerunner, they refresh that every 10 years or so. But yeah, it has this big body on frame truck like construction to it where you get this sturdy, thick, firm layer on the bottom, which makes it very stable. And also it still does has that trampoline effect in the bounce, which makes it a great shoe for not only zone two and recovery, but zone three as well. And the Kickr FF Leap on the top. So, yeah, I've sung the praises of this shoe from the rooftops and people are kind of surprised because I hated the two. But what they did with this has made it significantly softer, which has made it a go to shoe for me. And I think my number one, definitely my number one mileage shoe after the marathon. So top recovery dog now again, kind of replaced what the MagMax used to be for me in the past. But the MagMax still just it just has that no nonsense. There's yeah, there's less weirdness to it. The Super Blast is very soft, so that's where the MagMax takes it. But in terms of just stability and bounce, MagMax is great. All right. Another $200 shoe here. That's a favorite for me for stacking mileage. Hyper Boost Edge, again, a shoe you might be surprised in. But man, this is such a great shoe. It's super versatile. Yeah, I can use it for recovery. I can use it for daily. And then I hammered a long run 20 miles that I think was around a 710 pace with some pace pick up 17 by one minute at around a 540 or a 550. So you get this massive stack of foam. For me, it feels Goldilocks zone. It's soft and bouncy when I want it to be. It's also cushioned and comfortable and protective. I know this is a polarizing one. I'm not I'm not pushing it on anybody. I don't have any agenda, but I'm just sharing my opinion. It's got a lot of people riled up. Really hyper boost that you have all sorts of opinions on it. Looks are not my favorite, but the performance performance of it for me is really good. It goes in the same category with these two shoes right now. I think I actually had. Yeah. These were there's an inchworm or something on there. These were the shoes that I put as my top three right now for Instagram. And it just goes in this category of if I could only run in one shoe for the rest of the year, I'd be fine with any of these. The Blizzy Trace and Dynafish would be my top two for that. But Hyperboost is right behind them. And gosh dang, they've just been so many good releases recently. So if you want something that is very energetic, cushioned, comfortable that has that wild bounce when you pick up the pace, that will be the Hyperboost. And there's also something about a 100% non plated single foam shoe. Super Blast just different character because you get the dual foam. This one is single foam, which I think gives it a slightly smoother ride. And that smoothness for me is very much appreciated on my recovery days. All right. Last one here. I can't believe this is the the most expensive shoe on the list. Oh, and I'm also realizing I actually the Super Blast is 210. It's not 200 supposed to go lowest to highest. And the Hyperboost is 200. But this is the most expensive Cloud Monster Hyper 3 at $220. I just tested the light spray. That's also great. Either of these could be interchangeable for this slot. I have found the rides of them to be very similar. Some people are picking up some differences off to do more testing. But first run, they felt very similar, except the hyper or the light spray was just a lot lighter. It was very light and easier to turn over. So if I could only pick one, I would do the light spray. This is just the one that I pulled today because for a pure recovery running shoe, it's a little bit excessive to buy the $280 one. So if I had to pick one to recommend to most people for recovery runs, it would be this. If I had to pick one for me personally for my recovery runs, because I have both, I would use the light spray. But what makes them so good? Either the light spray or this very stable, similar to the Super Blast with this outside layer of EVA. And then you get this nice cushioned layer up top. I did a whole light spray versus or hyper versus Super Blast thing in the podcast with Grant that's coming out tomorrow night. But very comfortable shoe. Great roll. That's the thing that makes this elevated above some of these other shoes. The rocker on this, if we're looking at rockers, Dynafish and On are the two best for the rockers, just super smooth. And it's almost identical geometries here. Yeah, great heel bevel. You can land on the back. You can land on the middle. You can land on the front. Just total package and a crowd pleaser type of shoe. This is what I said yesterday in my video with the light spray. There are very few people who would not like the ride of it. It's not too soft, not too firm. It's nice and balanced. It's good cushion, but it also has decent bounce. And if you are getting this as a recovery running shoe, you'll also be getting similar to the other shoes on this list, something that you can use for picking up the pace as well. But if I had to rank these slowest to fastest, I'd probably say MagMax is the slowest and this one Hyper 3 is the second slowest. So it's not a super fast shoe, but compared to a lot of the traditional Max Cushion shoes out there, you're getting a whole lot more underfoot. So stable, cushioned, protective, floaty, really enjoyable, pleasant ride makes the legs feel nice and protected after those hard workouts. So there you go. My top five recovery running shoes at the moment. I'm sure you might be surprised with some of them, seeing how the category has changed. But yeah, I'm not I'm not going for the Glizzy Max anymore. Even the OG. I'm not going for that type of shoe anymore. I'm not so much going for the Nimbus anymore. I've also changed my training style some to adapt to what my life is like right now, which is just trying to get by a lot of the time and get in these shorter runs when I can. And that means I don't have to crush as many one hour zone one or zone two runs so I could go for things like this. But even if you are doing a lot of long, slow distance, the LSD style of training, I just think most people out there can benefit from these higher tech training shoes today that are just a lot of fun to run in. So there you go. I appreciate you. Let me know your top recovery running picks at the moment. I hope you have a fantastic weekend, by the way, because that's what the weekend is all about. I love you. And I'll be back tomorrow with the mileage podcast.