Choosing & Replacing Your Shoes

Now that my social media is littered with ads for running shoes, it’s compelling to scroll through, look at color-ways, and pick a favorite based on vibes, but in reality nothing beats the in-store experience for picking out running shoes. I highly recommend going to your local shoe store and trying them on.

Reading reviews is great but can only get you so far, since everyone is a little different (though if you are going to read a lot of reviews, try to find a reviewer who shares preferences and hopefully running mechanics with you). If a review gives you an idea of what you’re looking for then that’s great, but going to a local shop really is the gold standard. You’ll figure out what you like—bouncy or firm, wide or narrow in the toe box, etc—pretty quickly. Some studies have also indicated that shoes that work best for your specific mechanics will simply be more comfortable right off the bat, so trust your gut and your feet. Doctors of Running has an excellent guide on shoe fit that can help get you started if you’d like more info.

When should I replace my shoes?

Popular wisdom (and most shoe brands) will say somewhere between 250–500 miles for most shoes except race day shoes. Not that helpful. It has a lot to do with your mechanics as well as the surface you’re running on, and a lot of other factors. Once the shoe starts to feel “dead,” i.e., it doesn’t have the pop or spring it used to, you might start thinking about replacing it. Additionally, if you start getting little nagging aches and pains that are out of the ordinary for you, that can sometimes be the result of a shoe that needs to be replaced—try running in a different shoe and see if that solves the issue. Sometimes, though not all the time, you can see that the midsole shows more creasing the longer you wear the shoe—not small wrinkles but large horizontal lines from repeated compression (see below). This will happen to all shoes to some extent fairly quickly, but watch out for it if it becomes excessive or dramatic.

A pair of daily trainers starting to show significant creasing in the midsole. I started to think about replacing them shortly after this picture was taken.