After 109 days, 1 marathon, 1 half marathon, an 80-mile relay race, 2 ten-mile races, a soggy 8-K and 450 miles, my New Balance running shoes are done. They just don’t have the spring or cushion they used to have. Certainly, the wet 2009 Shamrock Shuffle didn’t help them last longer.
Admittedly, new shoes haven’t been shown to prevent injuries, but they sure make my legs feel better. I got a new pair of Mizuno shoes from the good folks at Fitness Footwear. You should go there if you’re searching for some shoes online.
Anyway, it occurred to me that there was a certain ritual I followed whenever I started wearing a new pair of running shoes. Here are 5 things you should do before using your new shoes.
5 Tips for Using Your New Running Shoes
1. Take pictures – It’s great to have a reference for what your shoes looked like before you started wearing them. It also lets you analyze the wear an tear if you’ve taken a photo of the treads. My pictures show that I tend to wear the outside heals of my shoes before the rest of the tread. The tread on good shoes last longer than those on poorer quality running shoes.
2. Lace them up - I like the standard criss cross pattern but others look cooler and can make attaching race timing chips easier. Here are 33 ways to lace up your shoes!
3. Attach your ID chip tag – You do run with an ID tag don’t you? If not, you should. You never know what can happen to you while out on a run. See the Shoe ID for more info.
4. Tie them up. I like a double-tie approach to ensure they don’t come untied. But I’ve used others and there are some that work great. For more options, check out the shoelace site.
5. Break them in slowly – Take a slower warm up mile just to make sure the shoes fit right and aren’t going to give you blisters. Don’t worry if your shoes feel a little uncomfortable at first. That should be expected. After about 4 or 5 runs, they’ll conform to your feet and should be good to go. If not, you might want to exchange them for a different pair.
Here’s a short 12 second video of my new shoes.
