I have read various things on the mile limits for running sneakers ranging from 300-500 miles. Now that Garmin connect has the equipment tracker I wanted to keep better track of my mileage instead of wearing to to dust…
What is a good rule of thumb for mileage limit for general purpose running sneakers? Is body weight a factor? I notice at around 200+ miles my heel is pretty worn down and I seem to develop sore knees but 200 miles seems low
I just bought the New Balance RC 1400 which def seems more like racing shoes for tris and not as robust. I plan to use only for races and occasional runs, what should the mile limit be for those, less?
shoes don’t know if you are running or racing, so the miles don’t accumulate differently.
I use a basic spreadsheet with all my shoes and just add to the mileage after ever run. I primarily use Saucony Kinvara shoes (2-3-4, 5s on the way). Those last somewhere around ~250mi, but that might be because I am fat and/or a bad runner and/or overly cautious after spending most of last season out with an ITB issue. I toss them once I notice that the sole is worn in a way so that, when they are placed on the ground, the shoes sit differently. Alternatively, one shoe might be substantially lower than the other if you don’t land 50/50 on each foot.
There is no mile limit. When shoes are ready for replacement, you’ll start to feel it. Body weight is not a factor in my experience (roughly 20-pounds from my lightest to my heaviest) Neither is how fast you run.
Most people dramatically underestimate how much outsole wear shortens your shoe life. A lot of what people think is midsole compression is actually outsole wear. You can minimize this factor by using Shoe Goo on them when they’re new. Just put a relatively thin coat over the areas you tend to wear out. Let dry overnight. Re-apply every few weeks. For me it dramatically increases shoe life. Much more than doubles it. When my shoes wear out now, it’s the upper ripping. Nothing I can do about that.
I used to get 250-350 miles on a pair shoes, tops. But now, whenever I use one with a half-decent upper, I often get over 1000. Almost always over 700. Trainers, flats, doesn’t matter. As long as I keep applying the Shoe Goo and the upper holds together, mile 500 feels just as good as mile 1
I’m not saying you’ll get this much but you’ll certainly get a lot more life for just a few bucks.
Interesting note about the Shoe Goo. I’ve always thought I can feel the difference between brand new shoes, worn in shoes (50 or so miles) and then slowly as they decay, which always had me replacing them around 300-400 miles.
There are no hard and fast rules. Running styles and surfaces are far too variable. A 100lb. midfoot striker who runs on a treadmill will get a lot more mileage than a 200lb heel striker running on chip and seal.
I typically get ~600miles out of a pair of training shoes. What goes for me is the outsole right at the nose of the shoe (I’m an under-pronator with a hard toeoff). Obviously, the thickness of rubber at that part of the shoe has a huge impact on the mileage I get.
Racing flats typically don’t wear as long because the materials are thinner to save weight. An extreme example are the Nike Mayflys that are rated for 100k by the manufacturer…though that’s a full season of 10k road racing.
I just run in them til they get uncomfortable. I usually start to notice it as a harsh impact with every footstrike, I can start feeling a reverberation up my leg upon impact and my feet will hurt a bit. I have been tracking shoe mileage for years, not to determine when to switch but so I know which ones are more durable. Saucony Kinvara 2 lasted about 300 miles, Newton Gravity about 450-500, K-Swiss Blade Light Run about 400, and my favorites the Adidas Energy Boost about 700-750. I will be giving the Adidas Ultraboost a shot as soon as my current Energy Boost wear out.
I run them until I literally have holes in them. You are not going to suddenly get injured because the cushioning is worn out.
A sports medicine doc told me my achilles tendinitis was directly related to high mileage in worn out shoes, actually. Permanent damage. Maybe not suddenly, no. But it’s important.
Anecdotally, when I was homeless, a lot of other homeless people I know miraculously had their foot/ankle/knee/hip pain go away when a couple of charities coordinated to give away hundreds of pairs of new shoes.
edit: That said, a local running store gives away ‘worn out’ donated shoes, and those shoes do tend to get a lot more miles on them. Only 1-2 at a time, but still.
I’ve gone through 3 pairs of Brooks Ghost 4’s each having about 750 miles on them in the past 3 years.
I’ve also put ~500 on a pair of Adidas Energy Boosts that are starting to really flatten out and it might be time for a new pair.
I run in mt maximalist shoes till they become minimalist. Have been wearing Hokas for 1+ year and while there is wear, they are still awesome. I think the whole replace your shoes after x miles is just marketing.
Cushioning is not the only part of a shoe that can break down over time or repetitive use.
And yes, you can get hurt from the simple fact of not enough shock absorption in the shoes. If your body takes more of a beating and you don’t adjust your recovery you are more susceptible to injury. I’m not saying you go from .01% to 90%, but it does increase after a point.
Cushioning is not the only part of a shoe that can break down over time or repetitive use.
And yes, you can get hurt from the simple fact of not enough shock absorption in the shoes. If your body takes more of a beating and you don’t adjust your recovery you are more susceptible to injury. I’m not saying you go from .01% to 90%, but it does increase after a point.
There is zero scientific evidence showing that more cushioning in shoes leads to reduced injury.
Well I said that other parts of the shoe breakdown. Those can lead to over use injuries from many things.
Cushioning in terms of firm or soft is not what I was referring to. Shock absorption would be more descriptive term. When barefoot shoes got real popular there were more stress fractures (according to some podiatrist I and sports med guys I talk to). Specifically sesamoids and calcaneus.
The bottom line is this, like so many things that are spoken in absolute terms, is very individual. Some people are more or less prone to injury for many factors.
Well I said that other parts of the shoe breakdown. Those can lead to over use injuries from many things.
Cushioning in terms of firm or soft is not what I was referring to. Shock absorption would be more descriptive term. When barefoot shoes got real popular there were more stress fractures (according to some podiatrist I and sports med guys I talk to). Specifically sesamoids and calcaneus.
The bottom line is this, like so many things that are spoken in absolute terms, is very individual. Some people are more or less prone to injury for many factors.
That’s also incorrect information. The barefoot shoes didn’t cause more stress fractures, but they did cause different kinds of stress fractures, with similar frequency. A researcher at Harvard looked into this.
Again, shock absorption of the shoes has never been shown to correlate with injury reduction. It has shown to alter the types of injuries, but there is no shoe or shoe shock-absorption that has ever shown to be statistically significant in terms of reducing injury than other shoes (or even barefoot.) Obviously, this is assuming you’re using 'running shoes and not something like steel boots for running, but that’s what’s been shown over millions and millions of runners.
I used to think the ‘replace at xxx miles because the cushioning is insufficient’ was a myth. I still run (occasionally) in my Saucony Triumph 6 shoes - over 1000 miles and no diff since new (that I can tell). Now, I have a pair of Asics GelLyte 33 shoes - I use them as lightweight trainers. After about 300 miles, I was sore after running in them. Switch to another shoe - not sore. Back to the GL33’s - sore. They don’t look worn out, but maybe they are. Perhaps this wear phenomenon is related to the initial capacity for cushioning - Triumphs are pretty cushioned, so some loss might be hard to detect. GL33’s have less ‘excess’ capacity, so when they provide less cushioning, I feel it. Maybe.
Like everything else if you are genetically perfect you can get away with stuff that would kill other people.
I go 500 miles before retiring my shoes. No reasoning behind this other than I read it in a magazine or website.
I don’t differentiate between race and training miles nor do I differentiate between good weather and bad weather miles(rain, snow, mud, etc.).
If you are convinced that after X miles bad things happen definitely replace your shoes. If on the other hand you have a “lucky” pair of shoes wear them until you can’t clearly identify that they are even shoes.
I use excel and pivot based on shoe type. I can tell you the first run, last run, average distance, average speed, longest distance, etc. for each pair of shoes. God, I love excel.
Btw shoes are Newtons(Distance and Gravity) or Brooks(Glycerin and Cascadia).
Cushioning is not the only part of a shoe that can break down over time or repetitive use.
And yes, you can get hurt from the simple fact of not enough shock absorption in the shoes. If your body takes more of a beating and you don’t adjust your recovery you are more susceptible to injury. I’m not saying you go from .01% to 90%, but it does increase after a point.
No. When you have less shock absorption you land with less impact force and vice versa so it does not matter much. That is what the research says. Doesn’t matter if it is due to a “softer” shoe or a softer surface. Also, most motion control devices do little because your foot moves inside of the shoe to compensate. In most cases, they are simply keeping your foot from working properly. Shoe “technology” has been oversold. So is replacing your shoes every XXX miles.
Your foot type. High arches like mine impact a smaller area of the shoe so the cushioning in that area is going to break down more quickly. A flatter foot is going to use more of the shoe.
1a. The corollary to this would be stride efficiency. If you have a neutral, perfect stride than you are probably going to land on the outside of the shoe the way the manufacturer intends and thus get better wear out of the shoe. My dad had flat feet and dragged them in such a way that the rear of his shoe would wear through evenly at the heal. However, he didn’t run much so he used his shoes until they fell apart which leads me to …
Your running volume. If you run 20 miles a week then you can probably wear your shoes until the outsole has worn off and the seams are falling apart. If not, then you probably need to pay attention. I got sucked into the minimal shoe movement in my 30s and found that I didn’t need much cushioning … until I did, which for me was about 80 miles per week. I still have a pair of racing flats from then that provide absolutely no cushioning, but I can’t race in them longer than a 5K or so without feeling beat up.
The type of shoes. Obviously, shoes with more cushion are going to break down more slowly than shoes with less. I have recently gone to max cushion shoes (Hoka, Altra) because they are so big that they simply have more material to spread the load. I finally tracked my Hokas and they lasted me for 100 hours of running before replacing them. That is about 2 to 3 times what I was getting from other shoes so the price of the Hokas (especially on sale) became attractive. The average shoe is going to last me between 30-50 hours of running. As such, a racing shoe is going to have less material in the midsole and thus, the cushioning will break down quickly. For shorter races that is not a big deal. However, if you race longer than 5K, then cushioning becomes an issue in your flats. Think of the midsole cushioning as a metal spring; it will compress and spring back until the metal fatigues and can no longer spring back when compressed.
Weight. Obviously, if you are light, you will get more time out of a shoe. Heavier runners put more stress on the midsole and that will then break down the midsole cushioning more quickly.
Age. You simply don’t recover as well when you go past 40. I did not want to believe it in my 30s, but I can’t get away with running in minimal or work out shoes anymore. I still train a couple of times a week in spikes and flats with my runners, but that is now less than 30 percent of my running.
The overall appearance of your shoes does not matter. If you run on the road and it never rains, your shoes may look barely used when you have complete crushed the midsole until it is no long providing cushioning. The look of the outsole (the hard rubber on the bottom) does not really matter either. By the time my Hokas hit about 50 hours of running, the outside corners of the heel rubber is worn smooth, but they are only about halfway through their usable life.
Also, remember that the shoe gradually breaks down, so IMO, it is a good idea to rotate at least two pair of shoes at once. When my Hokas hit about 50-60 hours I pull out a new pair for longer runs so that I am getting good cushioning part of the time. The old shoes become my “wear around” shoe.
I run them until I literally have holes in them. You are not going to suddenly get injured because the cushioning is worn out.
This. My current pair of Kinvaras have 580 miles on them as of yesterday. I guess it might be time for replacement since the upper has a hole starting. Oh and I noticed a weird blister on my foot in a place I don’t normally get them.