One Pair of Running Shoes Isn’t Enough
The benefits of rotating your shoes every day
Running doesn’t require much in the way of specialized gear. Any pair of shorts will do, and as long as your body is comfortable it doesn’t much matter what else you wear. With shoes, though, there’s an art to finding that perfect fit.
I’ve always been pretty serious about my shoes. I try to limit mileage on each pair and get a fresh one after the recommended 400 to 500 miles are pounded out. My closet is a graveyard of used-but-still-useful running shoes, and I’ve donated several pairs as well. They’re still fine to wear after the mileage is expired; it’s just that they aren’t great for running in. My body tells me when it’s time for a new pair: aches and pains suddenly appear, and recovery takes longer than usual.
I learned a few years ago that not only do you need to find the perfect fit and the perfect shoe, but switching between multiple pairs actually helps your body recover. After a nagging plantar fasciitis injury, a visit with a physical therapist confirmed that adding a different type of shoe into my rotation could help ease some symptoms I had.
A 2013 study in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports supports this idea. The study focused on 264 runners. About half of them used the same running shoe…
