What we don’t like about the Veloci Ascent
CHAD: The tech sheet claims this foam is soft, supportive, bouncy, and responsive. My first qualm with that is I don’t think any foam can be all four of those adjectives at the same time. I could see being soft and bouncy or supportive and responsive; however, it’s impossible to be all four things. In my opinion, the foam is firm and responsive. Squeezing the foam in your hand, it feels like it should be a bit softer underfoot, and I’ll acknowledge that it softened up a bit once I hit around 12 miles in it. However, I would not classify this foam as soft or bouncy. I’ll give it supportive, because of the firmness and decent stability.
The other noticeable thing is the high drop, which the brand says is designed to alleviate lower leg stressors for runners. I definitely felt this shoe in my knees and hips after all of my runs, as the rocker loses some of its effectiveness when the drop increases. Most shoes that successfully utilize a rocker are in the 4-6 mm drop range. As a bigger runner, I definitely prefer to stay in the lower drop zone to alleviate the impact on my knees, as my ankles and calves tend to handle the load better.
Normally, I would harp on this more, but I’ll give a bit of a pass because it’s Veloci’s first shoe. I like the feather logo, and I think they’ll be able to do cool things with it down the road, but the design was just okay. It is hard to make an anatomical toebox shoe look cool; just ask Topo and Altra. Also, small thing, but I hate the way the laces were done out of the box, going in down over the top of the upper instead of underneath; it makes the laces so hard to tighten properly. I had to relace mine.
