We might not trust a salesman who simply says: "Buy whichever running shoes are most comfortable". But, according to new research, perhaps we should. Benno Nigg and his research team in the faculty of kinesiology at the University of Calgary, in Canada, followed 1000 novice runners for a year and found that most of the beliefs about what shoes are best to prevent injury are false.He said that pronation (how much the foot rolls inwards as it lands) and impact force (how hard it hits the ground) are seen as problems to be corrected by running footwear even though they pose no injury risk."Runners will naturally select a comfortable product that allows them to remain in the preferred movement path. This might automatically reduce the injury risk," said Nigg.Nicholas Tam, a researcher at UCT's division of exercise science and sports medicine, said it is difficult to counter the work of the marketing machine."In South Africa we are still changing how we think about running shoes and are a bit behind."He said it was not widely known that the correlation between pronation and injury was weak because of marketing."People want to sell products and the pronation debate has been around for some time. But the science is slowly catching up and buying a special shoe doesn't mean you'll benefit."Proponents of barefoot running claim it reduces injury risk. But Nigg said there is no link - barefoot running works for some and not others.Barefoot runner Justin Louw said: "It feels right to me and I much prefer it to any running shoes I have tried, but I can see that, for someone with a different build and a different running style, it could be quite painful. I run on grass, not a hard surface."..