Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Earth Day Running Tip 3: Recycle Your Shoes… more than once.

I know that many of you probably follow this practice, but if not, why not? I have a phasing out of my running shoes. I go through shoes on a quarterly basis. When you are putting in 30 plus running miles a week, it doesn't take long for your shoes to break down. And at my weight, 500 miles is usually the breaking point. But I recycle my shoes three times. The first use of my shoes is for 3 months. During the next three months, after I am running with next pair of new shoes, I wear the prior pair for that same three months – only not in a running situation. Around work, around home, for walks, they become my casual shoe. I actually put in marker on the tongue of the shoe, the month and year that I wore the shoes as running shoes. I am currently wearing "11 10" shoes. This means I started wearing them in November 2010. When I started running in my new shoes "02 11", these became my new casual shoe. The shoes I wear for cutting the grass are "08 10" (August 2010) shoes. Thus, the shoes for cutting the grass are my second recycling of the shoes.

So every three months, the shoes all move on to a new phrase. Next month, May 2011, (or "05 11" for those of you following along), my 08 10 shoes will finally be brought to a race or church drive to be recycled. By then I'm estimating they will probably have 1000 miles on them but I'm sure still enough wear for anyone that has either no shoes at all or in need of any shoes because of the charity they receive them from. I'm guessing those shoes that aren't selected are recycled from what I'm told at race shoe drives, but I'm not counting that as the fourth recycling since I'm not totally sure if they are.

As you can probably tell, I go through a lot of shoes, but you must admit, I do get a lot of use out of them. And except for the winter, at work and maybe the beach, you won't see me in anything but running shoes. I think they are more comfortable than most shoes, and for the most part, keep my legs fresher than shoes that put form before function.

No comments: