About 40 km a week in one pair, and my log says they're at roughly 620 km. The outsole rubber honestly looks fine and the upper is intact, but the last three weeks my calves and knees feel beaten up after easy runs that used to feel like nothing. A replacement is £120 so I'd rather not guess. Did the feeling come before the visible wear for you, or am I inventing a reason to buy shoes?
I stretched a pair to about 1,100 km out of stubbornness and developed a calf problem that took two months to settle. I genuinely can't tell you it was the shoes — the physio thought my hill sessions had a lot to answer for — so I won't pretend it's a clean story. What I can say is that the last 300 km of that pair felt like running on a wooden board and I got no benefit whatsoever from the extra distance.
The band everyone quotes is 300 to 500 miles, which is roughly 500 to 800 km, and my own logs sit near the middle of that for firm daily trainers. 620 km puts you inside the window where it's completely reasonable for them to be done. On cost, that band works out at something like 15 to 25 pence per kilometre for a £120 shoe, which is cheap by the standards of the rest of the hobby. If your legs are complaining and you're past 600, this isn't you inventing an excuse.
I'd be careful with the tidy story though. Foam midsoles don't fail on a schedule — body weight, pace, surface and the specific foam all move the number a long way, and some of the newer supercritical foams behave differently from old-fashioned EVA. More importantly, sore calves after easy runs have plenty of causes that aren't your shoes, and buying a new pair can mask a training load problem for exactly one month. Replace them if they're past 600 km, sure, but if the soreness persists in fresh shoes, that's a conversation with a physio rather than another purchase.
Agreed. I bought three pairs in one year chasing a niggle that turned out to be me adding volume too fast. The shoes were fine, my calendar wasn't.
Past 600 km with fresh soreness and no other change. Buy the shoes, keep the old pair for walking, start a rotation.
@easy_pace_ellis · last wk. · 2 replies
The feeling came first every single time for me, and the outsole is the worst indicator there is because the part that dies is the foam you can't see. Since I started rotating two pairs, both last noticeably longer in calendar terms and I get a built-in comparison — the day the older pair feels dead next to the newer one, I know rather than wonder. That's the trick I'd steal: it's not really about giving foam time to recover, it's that you always have a reference point.
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@mobility_moss · 6d ago
The reference-point thing is underrated. I ran a whole winter on a flattened pair convinced I was just getting old, then put on a new pair and the difference was embarrassing.
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