Mr Olivier Bernhard, co-founder of Swiss performance brand On, doesn’t think of himself as creating shoes, but rather “sensations”. As a professional athlete, the three-time world duathlon (running and cycling) champion and multiple Ironman triathlon winner was obsessed by a quixotic quest for footwear with the perfect feel. Normally, there’s an inevitable trade-off between cushioning and responsiveness or speed: pushing off from a spongy base necessarily slows you down. Hence why runners often wear a soft, comfortable shoe for training and a hard, fast one for racing.

After he retired, Mr Bernhard’s seemingly impossible dream of billowy landings and lightning take-offs came true via the invention of hollow geometric elements that effectively close up on impact. “We combined the best cushioned shoe with your track spike,” he says. A month after On was established in Zurich in 2010, prototypes scooped the ISPO Brandnew award for sporting innovation. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology meanwhile demonstrated that the brand’s shoes enabled testers to run at lower pulse rate and blood lactate level. (It’s not clear exactly why, but they think it’s to do with improved shock absorption and transfer of energy into forward movement.)

But Mr Bernhard and his colleagues don’t really like to talk about that. They prefer to just give people – whether “ordinary” or elite athletes – the shoes to try for themselves: “And most of the time they come back and say, ‘I really like them. They’re different.’” The sensation was initially likened to running on clouds, hence the names of the styles.

Just turned 51 this year, Mr Bernhard still technically runs as a job, testing all the new models developed in On’s “secret lab” near the Swiss Alps. But he continues to love the freedom that he first felt as a five-year-old: “You can get up on the top of the hill and you can enjoy the view.” By “bringing more fun”, and removing some pounding, the brand makes it easier to start running, he says, and then to go faster or farther. You may have some distance to go to top his achievements, but this advice will help you on the way.

“When most people run, their centre of gravity is too low, they’re almost sitting. So do some more core training. Our shoes will also help because you have this little fraction of a second of this uncertainty, instability, before the elements close, and that will teach you to stay upright. It’s like when you go outside in winter – there might be icy spots, right? What your body does is it straightens up; it doesn’t go down on your knees, it really tightens, very straight. And that’s the way it should be in running.”

“If you’re thinking about swimming 2.6 miles, then going on a bike for 120 miles, and then finishing up in a marathon, you wouldn’t even start. It’s a mental game. If you’re willing to take up the challenge, I think you’re ready for it. If you think, ‘I’m never going do it, it’s too long, it’s not healthy, I don’t know how to hydrate,’ those are too many questions or excuses. It all starts with the moment you say, ‘I want to try, because I’ve ridden my bike for 100 miles and I was OK. I still can’t imagine how I can put a marathon on top of it, but with a little bit of training, I think I can do it.’ That’s the biggest hurdle you have to overcome.”

“At the end of my career, I realised that what’s really nice is that I dedicated every single race to somebody – my wife, my newborn kid, my dad. It’s almost like a present you’re bringing someone. It’s not you being at the centre of what’s happening, you’re only the delivery guy. As a professional, sometimes, there’s a lot of pressure from the media, the sponsors. And with that little trick I realised, ‘I’m not going to focus so much on me being the best I can be. I’m delivering this present. And I want to bring it to the person, and I want to bring it as quickly as possible, and I want to make the person smile.’”