How to Make Custom Spikes

It’s really a small world.

When I ran track in the mid 80’s, our McGill team competed with Wallace Spearmon Senior. Fast forward 25 years and now we have Wallace Spearmon Junior on the world scene. I am sure his success is partially genetic.

Wallace junior had some up and downs starting with his DQ in Beijing, NIKE not renewing his shoe contract, and a change of coaching venues to Texas A&M with Vince Anderson. (for more info on Vince Anderson, see previous article here and podcast here)

Despite all of this, he recently ran an impressive 19.85 200 meters in Rieti last year (video below).

Here’s a video from Eastbay and Saucony on how they fitted Wallace with a new pair of his branded “Showdowns” spikes.

Note how the maximum number of spike pins used to be 6, which is increased to 11 today. Pin placement is a matter of preference. Also, depending on preferences, you can choose half, 3/4 or full plates spikes.

For a 60m or 100m, I prefer a rigid spike, but for a 400m, I prefer one with some flexibility as I find the rigidness hurts my Achilles. It’s like a downhill ski boot… the next level up as shock absorbers are your knees. For a rigid spike, it’s your Achilles.

UPDATE: Sorry, the video is no longer on YouTube.