norda’s ‘Indestructible’ Running Shoe Makes You Feel Like a Gazelle (EXCLUSIVE)
The brilliance of norda’s trail footwear is unassuming. The understated look of its shoes, for one, is at odds with the oft-garish, aggressively sporty designs sold in elite running shops. But, also, norda is a minute operation compared to the sportswear giants with which it’s going toe-to-toe.
Founded four years ago by the husband and wife duo Nick and Willa Martire, norda’s swiftly become a disruptor in the running gear world, its 12-person team of “footwear-making maniacs,” as Nick lovingly describes them to me, producing incredibly quick shoes shaped by the industry’s most advanced technologies.
“Shoes today start in a marketing department. I'm not saying anything against that, I'm just telling the truth,” Nick Martire tells me from a Zoom call in his rural Canadian farm, rows of norda shoes decorating the wall behind him. “They're designed to look good on the screen and they do. But then, sadly, when you get [the product] in your hand it’s a different story. It's commercialism. It's putting shoes out to market every year for no reason other than driving sales.”
Nick is more than familiar with these kinds of shortcomings. A veteran shoemaker and keen long-distance runner, he founded norda after consistently suffering shin splints while running in what were the best trail shoes on the market. He knew he could create something better and, with the free time afforded by the COVID-19 pandemic, he did just that.
norda’s first shoe, the aptly named 001, is a trail running model immediately adopted by runners facing the planet’s toughest trails. Its upcoming fourth shoe, the less-aptly named 005, is also a trail running shoe, one made specifically for race day. And it’s seriously advanced.
The feedback Willa Martire gave to her husband after her first test run in norda’s 005 model — “I feel like a gazelle. I feel like there is nothing on my foot, yet I get the full energy return,” — was a sign that they were onto something. But it took a painstaking process of refinement to achieve perfection.
“I have tested the 005 on some of the most extreme terrain around the world. So, we know the shoe is not only the lightest and highest performing, but that it is of norda quality and ready to conquer any trail,” says Jason Schlarb, a top-rank long distance mountain runner and part of norda’s 665 running community. He’s been wearing the shoe for almost a year, helping inform what he calls “The best-performing trail shoe ever.”
A combination of never-seen-before technologies, the norda 005 represents a class of shoes normally dubbed a super shoe by the makers of marathon footwear. However, instead of being made for long distances on the road, the 005 is able to withstand the toughest terrain.
Easier said than done. As Louis-Martin Tremblay, norda’s Head of Design, explains: “We wanted the shoe to be very light, so you feel like you're wearing nothing. Then we wanted the midsole to give you the highest energy return possible. Then there was the aspect of breathability and drainage, a lot of races cross rivers…” you get the picture. To make a shoe that can take norda’s specifications off-road at the highest level, nothing already on the market cuts the mustard.
From the ground up, norda’s new shoe utilizes cutting-edge technologies. The sole unit is Vibram Megagrip Elite, the grippiest performance rubber compound offered by the world leader in high-performance rubber soles.
Nick previously told Highsnobiety that norda’s shoes are like Lamborghinis. Now, years later, he’s telling me that Vibram Megagrip Elite uses a “Formula One race day-level compound.” norda no longer only makes sports cars for your feet: The 005 is a wearable racecar.
Above, a high-compression midsole that only one factory in the world has the machinery to produce, made especially for norda from Arnitel (a high-performance thermoplastic elastomer). And it’s a similar story with the shoe’s uppers, made of Dyneema, a fabric normally found on bullet-proof vests or sailboat rigging lines. Again, only one factory in the world is able to weave it to norda’s specifications.
“What's amazing about Dyneema is its durability. We've seen numerous athletes run into rocks, and I think if it wasn't for the Dyneema, their foot would be cut,” says Tremblay, quickly backed up by Nick Martire: “You could literally hang three cars off of it. It has a pull strength of around 4,000 Newtons — the industry standard is 30 Newtons.”
No shoe has ever been produced with this tech combo, the performance specs made even more impressive by a remarkably low climate impact. The 005’s upper, for example, is entirely made from recycled organic materials.
“norda has integrated all these components, creating an impossibly light shoe that shatters the paradigm for what was thought possible for trail shoes,” says Schlarb, who has worn the shoes in the world’s most grueling races, including the Hardrock 100 (where he raced to a podium finish) and the Madeira Island Ultra Trail 115k, one of the “bucket list” ultamarathon races. He’s most recently worn the shoes again at 2024’s Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (better known as UTMB) where norda is currently exhibiting the 005 prior to its release in early 2025.
Inside a glass case at the center of a stark room that looks more like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the cutting-edge shoe is the pièce de résistance of norda’s activations at UTMB, ultrarunning's equivalent of the Super Bowl and a week-long event wherein all its trail-running rivals are also flaunting their flashiest running gear. But Nick isn’t too worried about norda’s competition stealing its thunder. “It took us two years to figure out this technology,” he says. ”Good luck to you if you want to try and figure it out.”
