Shoe mileage (Read 999 times)

It is very individual...how much you weigh, how efficient your running form is, what kind of shoes you have, and how old the shoes are since being manufactured all come into play.

500 miles seems arbitrary to me.  Over my almost 20 years of running I've never had to replace shoes that often.

I run mostly in neutral shoes and flats and run in different pairs as they strike my mood, no formal rotation.  It's my experience that I can get ~850 miles out of a pair before I get rid of them just on general purposes.  Sometimes my wife forces me to whittle down the stable so out go the higher mileage ones though they still felt fine.

 

I suppose if you have to use shoes that have excessive cushioning, motion control and stability doodads in them they will 'wear out' faster - maybe 500 miles is the right number for those.

That's basically where I'm at.  I've been moving towards more of my miles being in racing flats and less in trainers to the point where other than my trail shoes I almost never wear trainers (and my trail shoes are relatively neutral, I just like the aggressive tread.)

Looking through my records, it looks like most of my regular trainers got around 450-600 miles.  Most shoes get retired when they either fall apart or I start getting aches and pains. I get fewer aches and pains lately than I used to though now that I'm not using trainers for all of my runs.

My current favorite pair of road shoes are racing flats that have about 900 miles on them and are still going strong.

I remember reading in New England Runner about a guy who couldn't wait to get his first few hundred miles in a pair of shoes out of the way so that they'd be broken down enough to start using seriously.