Can You Get Away With Buying Cheap Running Shoes?
Have you ever stood in front of a rack of running shoes, and wonder why it is that they cost so much? Or thumbed through a catalog trying to decide if the shoes were really worth the money?
You aren’t alone. While there are a lot of good toys and destination races that can stretch a runner’s budget, our most basic cost for our sport tends to be one that at some point in our running careers we consider skimping on.
The worst time for me was when I was in college and funds were limited. I went through (on average) one and a half pairs of shoes per season, and I ran year round. That can get to be pretty expensive, especially if you need any sort of motion control or stability shoes.
What turned my thinking around came when a teammate decided to try an experiment to lower his shoe costs. He figured out that if he could get 400-500 miles out of a good pair of shoes that cost (on average) $95, then it made more sense to buy a $20 pair of shoes that he could get 150 miles out of before replacing. That would theoretically cut out a third of his per mile running cost and bring it down to slightly above the per mile cost of gas in his car.
It was a brilliant idea in theory, but not so much in execution. The first time that he ran out in the rain with them, the glue in the shoes dissolved and he very quickly had no shoes any more.
The cost of proper running shoes is well worth it, especially given the low costs for participating in our sport compared to others. Do not take that to mean that more expensive shoes mean better shoes, however, because that is not necessarily the case.
The average current model running shoe costs between $80 and $130. At the lower end, you have fairly neutral shoes that don’t have a lot of padding or stability, and at the higher end you have full motion control shoes for severe pronaters. Running in the proper shoes for your feet and gait is more important than how much those shoes cost.
If you aren’t sure what kind of shoes that you need, it is worth heading to your local running store where they can do a gait analysis and help you figure it out. Another method is to just keep trying new pairs of shoes until you find ones that work out well for you, which is what you’ll be doing even with a gait analysis.
Once you find shoes that work for you, be prepared to shop around again for a different style. As you get into better (or worse) shape and as you age, your running style may change and you may find that the style that worked for you last year doesn’t work as well this year.
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Blaine Moore is a running coach in Southern Maine with 20 years of training and racing experience that he shares on his blog at Run To Win.com.
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