Rarely do I buy more than two pairs of a certain shoe in a row. This comes from being fairly picky and being curious about new stuff on the market. The first shoe that I went past 2 pairs in a row of was the Saucony Kinvara 1. Right as the minimalist wave was hitting the market, I was looking for a low drop that still could handle the 80 mile weeks of intense training I was doing at the time as a sophomore on a competitive college team. I distinctly remember trying on the original Kinvara and thinking it felt like I was running in shoe boxes. I still gave them a shot because I was desperate to find a 4mm drop cushioned shoe that fit my foot well. A few runs later I was hooked. I went through almost a year of only training in this shoe. For only getting 200-250 miles a pair, I went through a great deal of Kinvaras before transitioning to the Altra Instinct after that track season. To this day I have not worn the same model for anywhere near that long. Needless to say when I begin to have trouble running hard +100 mile weeks in the Altra Instinct/Provision/ Torin/Instinct 1.5, I came back to the Kinvara 4. It was disappointing because either the toe-box wasn't shaped the same or my feet had been spoiled by Altras. I still had some awesome and blazing fast runs that reminded me of the shoe bliss of the Kinvara 1, but I ended up blowing through the upper of the 4th version at 170 miles. The shoe also felt dead at 120 miles, so I sadly retired them and got myself to move on....