The Changing of the Shoes

With 15 days to go until the Baltimore Marathon, it is clearly time for me to get some new running shoes. I’ve read that prior to a marathon you should replace your current shoes with an identical pair three weeks prior to the race, and also that you should run a Marathon in shoes that haveless than 100 miles on them.

I bought my current running shoes almost a year ago, in advance of running the Richmond Marathon last November. I have logged 83 runs while wearing them, for a total of 516.96 miles. If you Google the question, “How many miles should a pair of running shoes last?“, you’ll find a general consensus among the answers you’ll find that they should last between 300 – 500 miles. So I have to feel good about the mileage that I got out of these shoes, and confident that it is in fact time for a new pair.

I was the easiest sale of the day on my fast lunch hour jaunt to The Virginia Runner, and I was in and out in no time with a shiny new pair of Adidas Supernova Classic running shoes. The only difference from my two previous pairs was that the color scheme is now yellow/black/white instead of blue/grey/white. They feel great.

And as happy as I am with my new shoes, and looking forward to running two marathons and many miscellaneous miles in the in the months ahead, I’ve recently read a number of articles that point to our fancy running shoes as the root of all running evil!

And today I began reading the book, Born To Run by Christopher McDougall, for which I had ready a very good review in The Washington Post, and caught the author’s August visit to The Daily Show. I have yet to complete the book, but I’ve gathered enough already to know that it will make a case that running shoes do our feet more harm than good. I’m interested to learn more.

But I’m not ready to go running in naked feet just yet. Besides, if running shoes are bad for us, surely so must running shorts and shirts be. So look for me to take up naked running, maybe next year. For now, I have this song stuck in my head. Hopefully I can outrun it.

for further reading…

You Walk Wrong
New York Magazine, 4/21/08

Foot Loose (review of Vibram Five Fingers Shoes)
Runner’s World, 8/15/08

To Run Better, Start by Ditching Your Nikes
Wired Magazine, 7/10/2009

Barefoot running gains toehold on respectability
The Baltimore Sun, 9/22/09