Brooks Glycerin 21 Upper: Comfortable, Simple and Plush

Brooks is renowned for their uppers and fit. Endless comfort and a shape which suits most feet make them some of the best selling shoes in the world. Brooks offer the Glycerin 21 in both classic and StealthFit configurations. For the purposes of this review, I was running in the classic version. Here, there are minor changes to the Glycerin 20.

Firstly, there is a lot of upper. The Glycerin is designed for comfort through whichever distance you run and it starts here. At the rear of the shoe, the heel collar has a good amount of padding and is low-rise in comparison to many of its competitors. Along with the padding, it is also a very stout heel counter. Once your foot is in the Glycerin 21, it isn’t sliding out. Moving forward, the tongue is non gusseted and very thick. Even when cranking down the laces, the tongue ensured that there was no pressure on the top of my foot. Furthermore, it always stayed in place during the run. Continuing the plush comfort theme, the warp knit upper wraps the foot well and means that lockdown is very easy to achieve. 

Overall, the upper does exactly what you want in a daily shoe. It holds the foot tight, it is comfortable and takes no fussing to sort before you head out of the door. On the negative side, I am not sure how the upper will perform in the summer months when the temperature soars. During winter running when the scale has dropped into the negatives and rarely reached double figures, my foot has been pleasantly warm. This leads me to wonder whether that pleasant warmth will turn into a swampy sweat when the sun starts shining.

Finally, whilst the laces are fairly standard affairs which do the job. I found them to be very long! In fact, I am pretty sure that I could cut mine in half and still have enough to lace them well. That being said, it does mean that tying a runner’s knot or other lacing configurations should be no issue at all.