HOKA | Men’s Clifton 9 Running Shoes – Virtual Blue

Advice for Road Runners: The HOKA Men’s Clifton 9 Road Running Shoes are neutral running shoes. The Clifton 9 are lighter and contain more cushioning than the previous edition of this style.

They are designed to offer significant comfort for your daily training runs.

Underfoot Feel

The Clifton 9 have an early stage MetaRocker™. This is a signature HOKA design feature. It helps you to move through your natural gait cycle with greater ease and efficiency. When the MetaRocker™ is combined with the 5 millimetre heel to toe drop, you have running shoes that should help you to move with greater fluency.

As mentioned, the Clifton 9 are neutral running shoes. However, that does not mean that they do not provide support. HOKA’s Active Foot Frame™ functions in a similar way to a bucket seat in a race car. Your feet sit in the midsole as opposed to purely sitting on top of it. This, combined with the inherently stable geometry of the midsole, results in running shoes with a very stable platform from which to land and push off from.

In comparison to the Clifton 8, the midsole foam is 3mm higher. This means more HOKA cushioning underneath your feet – producing a softer running experience.

Upper Fit

The engineered knit upper is very breathable. It has a gusseted tongue to help stop the tongue from moving position during your run.

If you have broader feet, you may prefer the wider version of the Clifton 9. 

As HOKA only converts men’s US to UK sizes by half a size, we recommend choosing your normal US running shoe size.

Ideal Run Type

The HOKA Men’s Clifton 9 Road Running Shoes are best for training runs at slower to steady paces. However, the lightweight nature of the cushioning and overall design of these shoes means that they should be comfortable at your quicker speeds too. 

Shoe size is a personal preference and everyone’s feet are different, but we want to ensure you avoid any pain or discomfort from bruised toenails, rubbing, blistering or pins and needles.

Your running shoes should have enough width to allow you to spread your toes and should have some space at the front (we recommend having a half to one thumb’s width of space from the end of your longest toe to the front of your running shoes).

This usually means that your running shoe will be at least a half size bigger than your regular shoe size though this can vary from brand to brand.

Technical Features

• Approximate weight: 248 grams
• Forefoot stack height: 27 mm
• Heel stack height: 32 mm
• Drop: 5 mm
• Gusseted tongue
• Early stage MetaRocker™
• Inherently stable geometry 
• Durabrasion rubber
• Recycled polyester laces
• Recycled content mesh
• Vegan