Altra  Olympus 6 Trail-Running Shoes - Men's

Overview: I usually run in stiff, relatively low-drop, low-cushion shoes on trails. My trail runs often include lots of technical scrambling in the Front Range in Colorado, near Boulder. These shoes are completely different: large, maximalist, comfortable shoes that can hang on rocky technical terrain but really shine for long runs on gravel and less technical trails. They’re perfect for long hard-pack with some rocky sections. Altra provided me with this pair of Olympus 6 shoes to submit an early review. I’ve never been given a pair of shoes before, so I took this seriously, and put them through a set of three runs that I thought could test their abilities in various ways: Run 1: This was actually less of a run, and more about using the Olympus to hike on trails and bushwack through brush and talus between scrambles. I put them in my backpack and scrambled in approach shoes, then swapped shoes again between scrambles. 4 miles, 2000ft of vert. I ran short sections to get a sense for the shoe, but mostly found that they were comfortable hiking in difficult terrain, both on and off trail. Running, I found they made me think of a full-suspension mountain bike: you can run right over small rocks and uneven terrain, and these shoes just soak it all up. They require less precision than the shoes I’m used to, which is good, because they’re too heavy and physically large for really rapid footwork. Run 2: Altra put Vibram Megagrip on the outsoles, the same rubber as my approach shoes. So I pushed them to the limit by scrambling the 2nd Flatiron, the most popular 5.0 in Boulder. I would estimate the full run is roughly 30% hard packed trail, 30% technical rocky terrain, and 40% sandstone slab. All of it is very steep: 1300ft of elevation gain over less than 3 miles. This is not the right terrain for these shoes. It’s fair to say they performed surprisingly well considering their intended use, but the massive stack height makes them too unstable to really trust them for scrambling, and they’re too heavy to move really quickly on technical downhill. They performed quite well on the hardpack, both uphill and down. Run 3: My favorite scramble-free run is a great trail in Eldorado Canyon. This was the perfect run for these shoes: sustained but not incredibly steep elevation gain, 6.5 miles, 1130ft of vert. The trail has pure gravel sections, gravel with big rock chunks, hardpacked dirt, short stretches of very rocky technical running, and a whole lot of loose shale scattered over everything. They performed very well, and I came out of the run with a couple of stretches where I felt really good about my pace. I feel like a longer run on this type of terrain is exactly what the Olympus 6 is designed for. Comfort: The Olympus 6 is a comfortable shoe. The upper is light and hugs the foot well, the heel cup works well (for my foot, at least), and the gigantic toe box lets your toes splay out while walking and running. The massive stack height feels comfortable until you’re actually running, and then I’d say it actually feels a little bit uncomfortable because of the slight wobble it introduces and the overall gigantic profile of the shoe. They’re also pretty heavy, but I would say they’re surprisingly light considering the features: a huge stack height, tons of underfoot surface area, and some stability features, along with front and back trail gaiter attachment points and an unnecessarily-large pull tab on the back of each ankle. Stride and Stability: Altras are popular partly because of the claims associated with their zero-drop platform. The idea (part of the idea, anyway) is that a zero-drop or low-drop shoe punishes us when we heel-strike, and encourages a forefoot strike instead. This type of feedback is supposed to improve a runner’s stride over time. I’ve found this to be the case when running in Altra road running shoes. However, putting a massive stack height under the foot seems like it would dull any of the sensitivity required to really communicate anything about your stride or foot strike to your brain – and this is hard to extract from my overall feeling that the Olympus 6 just doesn’t really feel like a zero-drop shoe. I’m not going to take a bandsaw and calipers to it to really find out, but from a user perspective, it feels like a high-stack, low-drop shoe to me. There’s one other interesting note here: on certain terrain, particularly when running downhill on semi-technical terrain, I’ve found that the instability of the high stack height forces me to shorten my stride, which is actually a good thing since I tend to over-stride on the downhill. Is this a good thing overall? Hard to say, since I also feel like I’ve come close to rolling my ankle in the same circumstances because of the massive, soft cushioning underfoot. This lack of stability is somewhat offset by the absolutely massive outsole. The type of instability that I experienced at times is fundamentally different from the instability I would describe when I have run in minimalist shoes on rocky terrain, but the result is the same: lots of close calls with ankle rolls, which ultimately slows me down. Grip: The Olympus outsole is not entirely Vibram Megagrip; some of the central lugs are actually a much softer foam. But the exterior, along with lines that approximate the locations of your toes, are strips of megagrip material. I’ve found the material is nice and sticky, just like it is on other shoes I’ve run in with the same rubber. The lug pattern works very well for gravel or semi-technical rocky terrain, and decently well for mid-technical rocky trails, but this is not the shoe I would choose for highly technical trail running or scrambling; the shoe simply isn’t agile enough, is too heavy, and has too much give. Aesthetics: These shoes are polarizing. They’re absolutely huge: both very tall, and very wide. But I have to say, I really like the look of my Gray/Orange shoes, especially the orange gradient coloring of the mid-sole and the “Stay Out There” text you’ll read every time you lace them up. Durability: This is a real unknown. Based on review of prior version of the shoe, it’s a real question in my mind. I’ve run about 30 miles in the Olympus 6, and it’s seen about 5000ft of vert on a variety of terrain. I haven’t seen anything start to delaminate or fail in other ways, but only time will tell whether Altra has addressed the durability issues seen in previous models.

I am currently thru hiking on the AT. I’ve been a fan of the 5’s and put 700 miles on my last pair (not a fan of the tread falling apart).I have worn the 6s for about 100 miles. They have extra cushioning around the Achilles which has given me really bad blisters on the heel. The toe box seems smaller around the pinky toe. I do think they fixed a lot of issues, however, they created more. I’m just not impresssed. I really don’t want to finish my hike with these shoes. I plan to return them and go back to the 5’s.