keeping up with shoes

For the last couple of weeks I’ve had some minor and migrating tweaks and pangs in my knees, feet, and hips when I run. They tend to run themselves out pretty well and then show up somewhere else. This probably means it’s time to get new running shoes. Or maybe I need to stretch better or maybe it’s just the cold or maybe this is just what the last lingering stages of “extremely aged youth” feel like.

Currently I have two primary pairs of shoes. Both are road running shoes – New Balance and Adidas with 410 and 384 miles respectively. I tend to get about 400 miles out of a running shoe. Although, I think I recall taking one shoe up to 600 miles. Some only make it 300. After that the shoes get demoded to non-running shoe status, aka shoes.

I’ll try to drop by the shoe store soon. They’ve generally got some pretty good deals on leftover shoes ($40.) Tough to find the right size, though. It used to seem like a big important deal to me to find running shoes that were designed for my exact type of running style and foot shape and gait, etc. Now, though, after a few thousand miles of experience, I’ve found that it doesn’t seem to matter too much. If the shoe fits (and it feels squishy)… run in it. It sounds simple, but it’s really taken me a long time (a lot of miles) to know what “a good fit” really feels like.