Getting New Shoes

Alright so spring is here, the warm days are starting to come about with more consistency. The running shoes that have been sitting in your closet during the long dreaded winter. Chances are the running shoes that you have been running in are broken down. The best rule of thumb  is to retire your running shoes between 300-500 miles. So if your like me and over that  500 mile mark then its probably time to get a new pair of shoes. The first item of importance is why should we go out and get a new pair of shoes.

For starters running in a old pair of running shoes will likely lead to injury. Injuries like shin splints and runners knee are likely occur and could potentially get worse.  A little more obvious reason is the decreased level of comfort that will likely occur.  Let's be honest spending a little more on running shoes is probably a lot better than spending thousands of dollars on therapy or surgery.

Your at the store and your trying to be rational and find the right pair of shoes. The first thing that needs to be understood is pronation. Pronation is the rolling of the foot from the heel to toe through the foot strike. Their are 3 basic types of pronation: neutral, overpronation, interpretation. For more information  check out this article from TheRunningAdvisor http://www.therunningadvisor.com/running_shoes.html

The next important element that comes into play is how to determine foot type and  pronation is to determine arch height. To firgue this out in the easiest way, you should take the wet test. For more on how do the wet test http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-240-319-326-7152-0,00.html. Basically their are 3 different archetypes normal arch, low arch, and high arch.

Now that you have a basic understanding of running shoes we can begin to look into different types and some of the best models

Stay tuned for tomorrows post on recommendations on  some on different models!

Thanks for Reading!!

Keep Running!!