Today was a short refreshing run. The “Plan” called for three miles and I was happy to oblige. Luckily the wonderful weather we have been in having here in sunny North Carolina held off long enough for us to get our miles in. Just because the run was short doesn’t mean this blog entry has to be. Let’s talk about shoes… not about brands or the thickness of padding or lack there of, but about the need to replace them. I am in no way an expert BUT… I know I’m wearing the soles out faster and faster as I increase my mileage. I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading on the subject and since you can believe just about everything you read on the Internet (like this blog), I figure there are way to many opinions. One online article that I read that kind of caught my attention basically said that you should let your body tell you when it’s time to change. There are so many factors that can come into play from the type of shoe, size and gait of the runner, the running surface, and of course the amount of miles. Some runners can get 600 miles out of a pair of shoes, where is a fellow like me seems to burn through a pair in about 300 miles. I do notice a huge difference when I do switch out which tells me that I fall into the same category that a lot of us runners who are without sponsors…. we don’t replace our shoes often enough. The other topic that was brought up was allowing a shoe to rest for 24 to 48 hours between runs. The theory is that the foam in the sole takes that long to recover from being between you and the pavement for X number of miles. Now I’m not telling you to run out and buy another pair of running shoes… but if you’d like to donate to the Mike Running Shoes Foundation… So with some of that deployment money I went out on a limb and ordered two pairs of running shoes to replace my wore out pair. I have marked the pairs “1” and “2” and hopefully I can remember to switch them out on every other run. Hopefully this will not only allow my shoes to last a bit longer but also keep me injury free as we go along this journey towards OBX.
