Sunday, December 20, 2009

20.5 Miles to New Shoes

My old shoes had been holding up well this year. I had figured to need to replace them in the October/November time frame, but they kept holding up. I recently decided that they should hold up well enough to make it through the Disney World Goofy Challenge races--and that was my mistake!

This weekend's 20.5 mile run was going real well until around 16 mile mark, when I started to feel the telltale pain in my lower legs that indicates that my shoes need to be replaced. Just to be safe I took it wasy for the last few miles back on the run to avoid hurting myself. Looking back I shouldn't have quite been surprised since I had gotten longer wear out of these shoes than any other pair in recent memory. I had gotten around 500 miles on these shoes (I didn't know that until I went through my logs earlier today.) when some others had only gotten me through 300 - 350 miles.

To be fair to me, it isn't as if I was unprepared for this. I had purchased a new pair of the same shoes (Asics Gel Fortitude 3's) several months back and had started to wear them in recently to keep myself prepared, but still I was thinking I might have more time....



Anyway, here is a photo of old and new shoes, with the only differences between them being about 500 miles of road and trail wear, plus the Yanks laces on the old pair. I wonder how long these new shoes will stay looking so bright.....

2 comments:

Amanda said...

Wow - 500 miles is a lot of miles. I usually can't go over 300 or so.

Glad you still prepared by breaking in a new pair. The Goofy Challenge will be much better in newer shoes!

We're getting close now :)!

Richard said...

I've noticed in the last few months that my stride has altered a bit. I used to roll from heel to toe, but now is not so severe on the heel strike.