In my quest to become a triathlete, I’ve bought a bike, taken swimming lesson and now I’m testing out a rather funky looking pair of shoes.

Swiss triathlete and winner of the ITU Long Distance World Championships, Caroline Steffen is a top contender for the Ironman Hawaii World Championships this weekend. There she’ll be running in a pair of On – a shoe she says has helped her running. 

Ons were designed by former world champion triathlete Olivier Bernhard to help athletes like himself prevent injuries without compromising on speed and weight. Caroline Steffen is convinced by the shoes. She says: “The On’s have helped me in a big way to overcome my pain and injury issues.“

Well, I might not know anything about being an IronMan just yet, but I do know a thing or two about pain and injury, and anything that helps avoid that is fine by me. So I strapped on a pair and went for a short run.

In the face of the recent trend for more minimal shoes and barefoot running, the On Cloudrunners are a bold move in the opposite direction. The On sole features a number of three-dimensional elements or ‘Clouds’ made of flexible tubular pieces of rubber. 

The sole is designed to absorb vertical and horizontal forces to provide a soft landing. Once the foot is on the ground, the Clouds ‘lock’, providing a solid foundation for a powerful push-off. So while I expected to feel like I was running on a bouncy castle, the actual experience was more like a firm running track. There wasn’t the jarring that you can feel on the road – but neither was there there the difficult push-off that you get running on a beach.

The shoes seemed to want to make me land more on my forefoot – or at least my feet wanted to land that way while wearing them. Having recently come back from injury and just two weeks out from my next big race, I was reluctant to go with this at this stage – but it’s not something I’m against.

All in all, my short two-mile test drive along the road got a thumbs up. The shoes are pretty light but still offered the support that this overpronator is used to. Once the next marathon is out of the way I’ll take them for a longer spin and see what happens.

On Running.