I wrote my first review of a Hoka shoe in March of 2011. It was the Mafate I wrote about, and I was intrigued by that shoe not because of any kind of special mystique or secret sauce; it just, finally, after so many years of wanting and asking for it, delivered on a set of features.

What are those features? There isn't anything difficult about putting them into a shoe. It's just a matter of doing it.

First, the shoe has to be low-ramp, that is, it can't be jacked up in the heel, with a big differential between forefoot and rearfoot heights. Anything less than 8mm is okay with me. It just can't be 12mm or 15mm, which is the way it had been for decades. Second, it can't be low-ramp through flattening the back of the shoe, rather by raising the front of the shoe. The secret of Hoka isn't cushion. It's forefoot cushion. Yes, it's got cushion everywhere, but a lot of shoes had pretty good cushioning before the Hoka came along. Just not in the forefoot.

Third, it's got to have a nice flat surface facing up from the midsole on which my orthotic can sit. That might not be an imperative for you, it just was for me. Fourth, it's got to have what I'll call natural foot guidance architecture. Rather than a hard medial "dam" that keeps overpronators (like me) from caving in the medial side of the shoe - such posting not solving the root problem and just ruining the cushioning in the shoe - Hokas wrap the foot in a kind of midsole papoose.

There is nothing overwhelmingly high tech about a Hoka. Go to the Hoka website. It does not have ®Defibrillated Concavity; ®Expansion Proclivities; ®Granulated Divestiture; nor any other registered bullshit designed to fool you into thinking there's something special about the shoe. Here's a secret: one way to know that a footwear company really has nothing to offer - and knows it - is when it peppers its sales materials with ®Structurated Aersole and ®Morpho Ethylsauce.

My second Hoka review was published a few hours after the first. I liked the Mafate because it had the features I wanted. I loved the Bondi B because it had the features I loved in a performance shoe. The Bondi was a ten-and-change ounce shoe and that's really in my wheelhouse as a lightweight trainer.

Hoka One One was sold to Deckers Outdoor, owners of Ugg Australia, Teva and other brands. The president of the Hoka division, Jim Van Dine, and the president and chairman of Deckers Outdoor, Angel Martinez, are both sub-30-minute 10k runners in their days and finally got their hands on an interesting running brand. What they have done with the Hoka shoe is outstanding. But it has not come without its hiccups. There were factory changes, material changes, there was a furious run-up from a $4 million brand to a $40 million brand and all these changes expressed themselves in the shoes from time to time. The three examples that stick out, to me are the Hoka One One Conquest, which I love conceptually but I find the shoe harder than I'd like; the Bondi 3, which was a clear miss; and an unannounced and annoying (at the time) change in sizing (inexplicably I went from a size-12 to a size 11 1/2 between the Bondi B and the Bondi 2, and remain a half-size smaller in most of Hoka's shoes).

The Bondi 3 was a painful miss, for me, because I have always felt that the Bondi was the flagship road shoe in the Hoka's road line. Yes, the Stinson is a popular shoe and the Clifton is setting the world on fire. But as a day-in, day-out shoe - not the shoe you date on race day, but the shoe you're married to, and that you wake up to every morning - that's the Bondi.

When I first laced up the Bondi 3 I knew I was in trouble. The shoe was wide. Wide wide wide. This came from a decision to replace the padded tongue with the razor thin tongue in the Conquest. But the pattern in the upper was not changed to accommodate the extra volume in the shoe the new tongue design offered it. The upper also underwent a material change that made the shoe roomier yet.

For my own running I had to wait out the Bondi 3. I feverishly lit out on a search for Bondi 2, finding a gaggle of them on closeout at Running Warehouse. I was like a guy filling up canteens in preparation for crossing a long desert, hoping I would get to the other side. And when I got to the other side, what would be waiting for me? The oasis that is the Bondi 4 would offer me what?

I got my new pair of Bondi 4 about 10 or 12 runs ago. The padded tongue is back. Thank God. Not that anything is wrong with the thin tongue in the Conquest, it's just that the Conquest is built with the thin tongue in mind. The Conquest, with its thin tongue, is still a narrower shoe than the new Bondi 4 with its padded tongue. Just, the Bondi 4 needs that padded tongue unless it's going to undergo a wholesale pattern change in the upper.

The Bondi 4 (the images in deeper blue) recaptures the fit of the Bondi 2 - big relief to me - but it still has a seamless feel to the upper that the Bondi 2 (and especially the prior iteration, the Bondi B) lacked. It's hard to put a seamless upper into a shoe and have it still feel supportive. Most of the time seamless uppers are placed in neutral shoes, where transverse stability is not a premium. For this shoe such stability is important, and somehow Hoka's designers have figured out how to give the shoe a soft, seamless feel while making sure the shoe retains the "guidance" - to use Brooks' nomenclature - features that make this shoe work.

Just above, in paler blue, is an image of the Bondi 2. Note the stitching in the forefoot of the upper that you don't see in the Bondi 4. Hoka has figured out a way to get rid of that stitching and still maintain transverse stability in the Bondi 4.

There's a structural feature in this shoe that did make it into the Bondi 3 but went unnoticed - by me - because the rest of the shoe just didn't work. But in this shoe - the 4 - all of a sudden this feature makes sense, and works. It's a fairly rigid band that spans and wraps the heel cup. It's clear to see in the images further above, and it's the band that's got a white "Hoka One One" printed over it. The Bondi 2 - great shoe that it was - didn't have this wrap, as is apparent from the image above. That stabilizing heel wrap works. In fact, it works so well that the shoe comes on and off with more difficulty than did the Bondi 2, because your heel is cradled and captured in this shoe.

This is a road shoe, but I do almost all my running offroad. Hoka underplays this as a trail shoe: it, "has just enough traction to play on light trails." Fine. But if this shoe was the only shoe in the Hoka line it would instantly be among the best trail shoes in the world. The only reason it's not considered a trail shoe is because there are more aggressive outsole patterns among Hoka's offerings. But the outsole in the Bondi 4 does bear mentioning. I have heard about outsole wear pattern issues in the past. Obviously this is not anything I've experienced because I don't run much on the pavement. But I show the outsoles just above of both the Bondi 2 and the 4 (with the black strike plates) to illustrate the change in the positioning of - and material making up - the strike plates in order to increase the lifespan of the Bondi 4 for runners who are on the pavement and who have suffered early outsole burnout in prior iterations of the Bondi.

We are now closing in on 4 years since my first run in my first Bondi. It is clear I am more than enthusiastic about this shoe. I am dependant on this shoe. This year marks my 45th year as a competitive runner, and it's shoes like the one that make me confident that running and I will make it to our golden anniversary.