As long-time readers of this blog will attest, I’ve had a pained relationship with Altra shoes. When I was first introduced to the Timp 1.5 I fell in love with it and the Timp 2s became my go-to shoe for many years. I skipped the 3’s, and had a struggle with the 4s before Altra seemed to fix a lot of things in the 5s. I also play around with some of their other shoes and have had both good and bad experiences with those.

I’m hopefully attempting the Arrowhead 135 in a week and decided to check out the GORE-TEX version of the Timp 5, and in particular the mid-height version since I do enjoy some ankle support in mushy conditions. I had high hopes for these shoes as the Timp 5 has been relatively solid for me and a GORE-TEX version sounds like a winner to me. Unfortunately, these shoes have a fatal design flaw that means they’re heading back to REI after only 5 miles.

I headed out this morning with my sled, pulling on some lovely snow covered horse trail and immediately I loved the feel of the lower part of the shoe. It had the same cushion and fit that I was used to with the regular Timps, and the outsole had some really decent traction to it. But very shortly I started to notice something rubbing on my ankle.

I stopped to see if I could adjust anything, but no matter what I did I couldn’t get the harsh bump to move away from my ankle bone protrusion. After a couple miles I decided to bail out from the trail and drag my sled back along the bike path to head home. The entire time my ankle getting rubbed raw by this weird seam.

In the picture here you can see how they chose to sew the gusset right above where your interior ankle bone sticks out. When you tighten down the shoes the gusset material bunches up and no matter how you adjust it, it creates a lump between your ankle and the upper of the shoe. It feels like a a terrible design choice that never went through proper testing. Overall, a huge disappointment.

Oh, and to add one more insult to everything… the laces aren’t long enough to use all of the cross-hooks and so you can only lace up the first one if you want a good solid shoe tie. Really Altra?

I’ll probably pick up a pair of the standard Timp GTX shoes which are the standard height just like the regular Timp 5s, but I’m getting really tired of dealing with a shoe brand that just doesn’t seem to think through their design choices and it ends up creating hassles for their fans.