Saucony Women's Guide 14 Running Shoe

Product Information

Guide to Hurricane is similar to Adrenaline to Transcend (now replaced by Glycerin) in the Brooks lineup. Covering the Guide is a standard engineered mesh upper. The soft and smooth mesh breathes well, which will keep you cooler on warm days, and it molds around the unique shape of your foot for a better fit.

Personally I’d prefer a dual-density foam design over a TUP medial post, but I’m not a stability runner most of the time so the need for rigid support is not at the top of my list. The Saucony Guide 14 is fine. Nothing really wrong with it, but also there’s nothing really to get too excited about. It has a purpose and it does it well, period. Guide 14 jumped out of the box with a look that matched its later ride; “Hi, I’m a standard shoe of quality build, a bit old fashioned in technology (medial post; I’m lookin’ at you). Since you ran in 90’s Gel-Kayanos for years; I’ll feel like home.” Saucony’s FORMFIT system also shines here. The three-layer fit system adapts to your foot shape, weight and gait for a close-to-custom feel. The 860 has a more streamlined cut and seems to bring me onto my toes more readily than the Guide, with Guide 14 providing a more substantial-feeling base underfoot.I only had this issue in the heel though, midfoot and forefoot fit well, and I was able to run no problem in the shoe other than the small annoyance of my heel slipping. Boring looks While neutral running shoes don’t use additional structure, stability shoes like the Guide 14 use the extra technology to help mitigate the effects of overpronation.

To enhance the smooth ride, Saucony layered the Guide with a comfortable PWRRUN midsole. The well-rounded foam composition cushions your landings but delivers a bouncy response for a livelier ride. Stability shoes are not normally super plush, they tend to have hard, plastic medial posts under the arch, or stiff midsole foams, and the Guide 14 is no exception to this.On top of the mesh, Saucony added lightweight overlays to provide extra structure. The minimal overlays fan out across the midfoot, which helps the mesh maintain its shape and improves the shoe’s overall secure feeling when you tighten the laces. In the intervening years, the Guide has gone through a number of changes but has remained a reliable stability model which has always delivered a great fit and feel for many runners. Each version has continued to incorporate many of Saucony’s advanced technologies. So fast forward to 2023 and the Guide 16 continues in this vein! I personally don’t like stiff heels, they don’t work for my foot, and the result is noticeable heel slipping. Just as Hurricane is in line with Brooks’ Transcend, so Guide is compatible with Brooks Adrenaline.

I like bright shoes though, so if you are from 1984, you may love these shoes and even request a pair of gray laces to mellow them out! Not for night runs My first run in the shoe actually felt refreshingly light as I had been running in Gaviota 3. I ran some fast-paced intervals amid traces of melting snow from spring! New Balance’s 860 is also a comparable shoe, with a 10 mm. drop and similar weight, in the half-size larger 860 that my foot needs. The Guide from Saucony has received high marks for consistently being a solid shoe in the brand’s stability lineup, as the mid-cushioned, firmer younger sister of the brand’s Hurricane which employs the softer PWRRUN+ midsole. Saucony has made their PWRrun midsole a bit softer in this update but it’s still a stiff shoe without a ton of response or pep.

Features

I wish Saucony would jazz this shoe up a bit. It’s not that exciting to look at with its main design feature just being a juxtaposed lace color… Sure the laces match the outsole, but that’s all. Gray on gray, with some colorful laces. Pronation is the natural inward roll of your foot as you land and begin the transition to your forefoot, but it can become a problem if you pronate too much. This excessive pronation can prematurely wear out the inside edge (called the medial side) of your shoes, which over time creates an unstable platform to run on. I was expecting a firmer medial experience through the midfoot transition, but it wasn’t as prominent as I thought it would be,” he says. “Overall, it feels more adaptable than your traditional stability shoe.” The latest version of the Guide uses a lightweight PWRRUN foam midsole which is sculpted to provide a super-smooth ride, with a HOLLOW-TECH system adding stability exactly when and where it’s needed. The holistic nature of this stability system means it’s equally suited to neutral runners needing some extra support as they tire during longer runs as it is to those runners who rely on some additional stability on a daily basis. For these very reasons the Guide is a favoured choice of a number of the Run4It team, many of whom have differing stability requirements. At a time when almost all running shoes had higher drops (with 12-14mm being the norm), Saucony used learnings from their Kinvara model which had introduced lower drop design to the mass running market to produce the Guide 5. This particular model was a massive success and was at the forefront of the brand’s move to reducing drops across their entire range, an approach which has now been encompassed by many other brands.