I recently bought some new running shoes in real life. The old shoes had served me well, through more kilometres than I’d care to think about, including both the Bristol and Bath half marathons. They were still pretty comfortable, I thought, and they didn’t look too shabby, considering all the mud they’d trudged through.

But then I tried the new shoes on in the shop. They were only the next model year along from the old ones, but as soon as I put them on I felt the difference. They had bounce. They felt like they were supporting my feet a lot better than the old shoes. And they were a shiny new style in a more striking colour.

It’s not like the old shoes were bad. It’s just that they weren’t shiny and new any more.

Can you tell there’s an analogy coming on? Well spotted! At the same time I was buying my shoes, we at Splendid Things had an artist working on a shiny new shoe icon for Get Running. We’ve just received the final version, and we think our artist, Olaf Mayer, has done a great job making a shoe that still looks a little familiar, but is full of new bounce and glossiness.

We’ll be rolling the new icon out gradually — there are a lot of places to change it, from the Get Running apps themselves to the website, Facebook and Twitter, and probably a few places I’ve not even put on the “to do” list yet. Look out for it first on the Android version of Get Running, which I’ll be updating with the new icon very soon…