Running Shoe Maintenance Tips

Running Shoe maintenance tips:

To ensure you get the most out of your running shoes allow me to offer up some tips. Feel free to share your own below:

  1. ONLY wear your “running” shoes to run. All activities including: walking, cross training, or any other activities in your running shoes will wear them out faster. Think about it like this, your shoes can only provide so many steps, so make them count!
  2. When you get a new pair write the date of your first run on the sole of the shoe so you know how old it is, then use your older shoes for all the other non-running activities!
  3. If you must wash your shoes, use a hose vs the washing machine, but if must wash them in a machine, never dry them in a machine! The high temps and bouncing will break down the composite unnecessarily.
  4. Wet shoes can be turned upside down and placed on your floor vents. The actual temperature doesn’t matter as much as the constant flow of air does. Adding newspaper inside makes the magic happen even faster.
  5. Replace running shoes after 300-400 miles MAX, sometimes even less depending upon many things like your injury factor (how often are you injured and what sort of injuries do you typically get? shin splints = faster rotation. Are you a heavy runner? ladies over 150lbs and guys over 180lbs would be heavy runners. the thinner soul folks (minimalists) need to buy more shoes. Other factors include: what type of surface do you typically run on? The harder the more frequent you need to buy shoes. The tread on the bottom of your shoe is NOT an indicator of how good your shoe is, it’s the cushioning (or lack thereof) that matters.
  6. Get your shoes from a running shoe store. NOT DSW, or Dick’s sporting good and probably not online either (unless you know what you are doing). Running shoes should not be based your outfit or their color. They are functional and each of shoe serves a different purpose. If you don’t know what purpose your current shoes were created for, then you are probably wearing the wrong shoe and likely running straight towards an injury. You are doing your feet, knees and back a huge disservice by wearing old shoes, or the wrong shoes.

Got other tips? Share below, or share this post with your favorite runner!

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