ONE OF THE country’s top middle-distance athletes of the last decade, Vinny Mulvey, says that runners of all levels should change their footwear every 4-500 miles to prevent injury.
With the Dublin marathon rapidly approaching and record numbers set to take part in this year’s race, the Raheny Shamrocks man, who has represented Ireland at the European and World Championships five times, added that tracking your weekly miles is the key to knowing when to change.
“It depends on whether you do most of your running on road or grass really,” he replied when asked when is the time to bin your current pair, “because if you mostly run on road you’re going to wear down your runners that little bit quicker but I generally tell people to change them every 400 miles.
“Most people won’t know by the feel of the shoes when it’s time to change but usually, they’ll notice the difference when they get new shoes; they feel great. As a rule of thumb I usually say between 4-500 miles,” he added.
“An easy way to know when to change is simple log how many miles a week you do. Some weeks you might run 10, other weeks you might run 40 so if you average 20 miles a week, multiply it by 52 and that’ll usually give you a yearly total and if it comes in at 1,000 miles then you change them every six months, or if it comes in at 500 miles you change it once a year,” he said.
Many, of course, won’t abide by this and continue running long after the shoes have lost their shock absorbing capacity.
“Definitely, in my experience as a physical therapist I see a lot of people coming to me with injuries and one of the things I look at is their shoes. A lot of the time they’re worn down and you can see straight away why their injured. So, depending on how people run, if they lean on the outside of their foot or over-pronate, for example, you can see that in the shoes and that will lead to over-use injuries or repetitive strain injuries.
“So I usually advise people to wear the shoes around for a few days and go for a few runs in them before a race; I wouldn’t be lacing up new shoes before a race; you could get to 3-4 miles in and the shoe starts to rub off your foot, it mightn’t feel great, you just don’t know. I think you just need to get comfortable in them.
“There’s a lot of shoes out there that do a lot of different things so my advice is always to go and get fitted for runners in a proper running store.”
Vinny Mulvey is a physical therapist, based in Ashbourne Co. Meath and a therapist with Athletics Ireland and Leinster Rugby. He also organises running camps in the Phoenix Park starting in January for beginners and intermediate and all the details are vinnymulveyfitness.com
