Obsessing Over Running Shoes

Right now, I am training for marathons and trying to run under 2:30 in the race, which is about 5:43 every mile. I have been out of college for six years, and I ran the 5000 meters and 10,000 meters throughout college. I run 80 miles a week, about 340 miles a month.

The biggest expense of having to run this much is running shoes. Because the life cycle of training shoes is traditionally 300–500 miles, I am supposed to cycle through shoes once every month or every month and a half. However, because running shoes are expensive, I tend to really stretch them and only change the shoes once every two or three months.

Throughout the last 16 years, I must have used and worn through at least 100 pairs of running shoes. For the big brands of running shoe companies in the running community, like Nike, Saucony, Brooks, and Asics, I am probably their dream customer. Over my lifetime, I can estimate that I probably have spent over $8,000 on running shoes.

I remember when the $250 Nike Vaporfly first came out in 2017. It was the first “super shoe,” designed with a carbon plate that made runners 4% faster than other marathon running shoes. I swore I would never buy them at the time. I thought they were a form of cheating and unfair advantage, and $250 was way more than I was willing to pay for a pair of running shoes.

Three years later, my mind changed. What started as a shoe that I only saw Eliud Kipchoge wear during his famous first attempt to break two hours in the marathon became commonplace. The shoe was accepted by running authorities, with some regulations. Within three years, it seemed like everyone started wearing supershoes, not just elite runners. It was also the people in my running club. Since everyone was wearing supershoes, it also seemed like I would be at a disadvantage if I didn’t.

I went to an event at the running store where the $250 Vaporflies were 20% off. Although $200 was still incredibly expensive, I was ecstatic at the discount. I had never worn the supershoes before, and the store manager let me try them on to run on the treadmill.

I ran a mile on the treadmill, and I was instantly a convert. I ran a 6 minute mile easily. I felt like there were springs on my forefoot. While they felt extremely awkward to walk in, I suddenly not only saw, but experienced the hype. Running faster was so much easier. My stride became much more efficient, and I was striking more on my midfoot and forefoot than my heel, which is more efficient as a runner. Although it stretched the wallet more than I would normally be comfortable with, I splurged on the supershoes, and used them in races to run much faster than I necessarily would have expected at my level of training.

I have bought three pairs of supershoes in my life, two of them different renditions of the Nike Vaporfly. I love the shoes, but I can only spend around $200 on shoes once every once in a while. I have a cheaper pair of Asics supershoes, and was gifted a pair of Under Armour supershoes. Because they are so expensive and because conventional wisdom among runners is that the carbon plate only has around 100 miles of benefit before it starts wearing off, I usually only use supershoes in races and I use them in training sparingly.

However, I did a 22 mile long run in an older pair of supershoes where the racing benefit wore off. I run over 20 miles all the time for my long runs. Predictably, my legs are usually trashed after and I need a day or two of easy, very slow running to recover. I put in 12 miles at my marathon pace, which is under 6 minutes per mile during the long run.

The actual effort was a lot smoother and easier because I was wearing supershoes, but I noticed an incidental, very surprising benefit: after doing the long run in supershoes, my legs were not trashed at all. I even had enough spring in my legs to run 7.5 miles later in the day and was still not very physically tired.

I found this shocking, and later scrolled online to see some research that supershoes not only have a racing benefit, but also have a benefit of more efficient running economy and better recovery. While it is still a burgeoning field of research, some scientists believe running in supershoes may have a training benefit as well as a racing benefit.

But I have to be careful not to overemphasize the glorious benefits of the supershoe. The shoe is just one small part of the training process — what really matters is putting in the work, believing in myself as a runner, and performing on race day. The shoe helps, but it’s just an accessory. It’s not about the shoe — it’s me as a runner that makes or breaks the performance.

And that’s a lesson I wish I had learned sooner.

. . .

In middle school, my mom drove me to DSW to buy a really cheap pair of shoes for running. I knew nothing about running shoes at the time. I just started running on the track team, and we bought these Champion shoes that looked like they were good for running. I wore these shoes for two years until the 9th grade.

In high school, our coach recommended we all go to the local running store. I learned I was an overpronator, which means that I strike on the outside of my foot and then my foot rolls inward to strike the ground. I also have a flat foot, so I would benefit most from a stability shoe that compensates for that overpronation. The DSW Champion shoes were a size 7.5 — one store employee had me put my feet on a shoe sizer. Apparently, in the two years since, my shoe size was now a 10.5, so I was wearing running shoes three sizes too small. They were also shocked that I was running in those shoes, which they talked about like it had some defect.

Over the years, I learned a lot about running shoes. I know the difference between motion control, stability, and neutral shoes. I know how the foam of the Brooks Adrenaline adapts to how your foot strikes the ground. I know the exact weight of the Saucony Hattori. I know which sites to go to to bypass the retail price of shoes and to get them at a discount.

Over the years, I have accumulated so many different types of shoes that any non-runner will see me as a sucker for the running shoe industry. Besides video games, I never desired shopping for clothes or food or anything my friends spent their money on. I wanted running shoes. My parents always wondered why I was accumulating so many shoes — wasn’t just one pair enough? And why was I clogging the front doorway with all of my shoes? These days, my wife asks me when I can get rid of or donate some old shoes that take up too much space on the shoe rack.

Besides regular training shoes, there are racing super shoes for the roads. There are workout “flats”. There are trail shoes. There are racing spikes for cross country, and racing spikes for running long distance on the track sitting in my closet.

In the ninth grade, I obsessed about shoes. I used to think that if I could just find the right shoe, I could magically run huge personal records. When I performed badly in races, I blamed the shoe, and swore to never get them again. When I did well in a race, I thought that shoe was the holy grail. Runs where I felt great in running shoes turned me into a convert for that shoe, whereas runs where I felt terrible were a deterrent.

This trend continued all year, and the only thing stopping me from buying more shoes was money, but there was a time when, no matter the shoe I wore for races, the performances were the same. I ran several mile races in ninth grade where I ran anywhere from 5:03 to 5:06, without hitting my goal of breaking five minutes in the mile, and no shoe seemed to make a difference.

I would eventually break five minutes in the mile, but it was with the same shoe I wore that I ran many of those other races in (the Saucony Endorphin). If I knew that I just needed time, training, and a better race strategy, I wouldn’t have insisted on getting other shoes. If I knew the other parts of running mattered a lot more than the shoe, I wouldn’t have obsessed over it.

. . .

After that year, however, I wore all different types of shoes as I just racked up hundreds and then thousands of miles. I wore neutral shoes I got for cheap, and that I saw on discount. I often looked for a past edition of a shoe I have worn before online, which I could find at a $50 or $60 discount from the present rendition (like the Nike Pegasus 40 over the Nike Pegasus 41). I used the stability shoes that were first recommended to me. Since I had to cycle through so many shoes, I just looked for the cheapest, legit-looking running shoe I could find on Running Warehouse.

It’s certainly not a running shoe strategy I would recommend to others, but I realized that the shoe, for me, really didn’t matter that much. With the exception of the supershoes helping my race times, in training, I could cycle through hundreds of different shoes.

One coach told me this was because I had good running form and mechanics, and my frame as a smaller, short person makes me less injury prone than a lot of taller, lankier runners. I could just get several Saucony Kinvaras, Brooks Adrenalines, or Nike Pegasus for sale and be set for a whole year.

I wouldn’t necessarily say I was fooled or bamboozled by conventional running shoe wisdom: plenty of my running friends can get injured by wearing the wrong shoe. Plenty of my friends have worked at running stores and recommended shoes that have resulted in high customer satisfaction. One running store employee’s recommendation of the HOKA Clifton to my wife has allowed her to walk with less knee pain.

But I did have an unhealthy fixation and tricked myself into thinking the gear and accessory of a running shoe was more than just that: gear and accessory. I should have put faith in the one thing that I could control in my performances and in my love for running: myself.

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This post was previously published on Ryan Fan’s blog.

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