How many miles (km) do running shoes last? Mileage calculator

Most running shoes last 300 to 500 miles, or 500 to 800 km. That is the range most shoe makers and running stores quote for a daily trainer. It is a starting point rather than a rule: some pairs are done at 250 miles, some feel fine at 600.

Shoes do not fail on a date. They fail on a distance, and by the time your knees tell you, you have been running on dead foam for weeks. So the useful number is not the range, it is how far your own pair has gone.

How long each kind of shoe lasts

These are commonly quoted ranges, not lab results for any one model. Where your pair lands depends on:

• You. Heavier runners and heel strikers compress foam faster.
• The surface. Trail and track are kinder to the foam than concrete.
• Rotation. A pair that gets a day off between runs recovers more of its bounce than one worn every day.

How many weeks your pair has left

Put in your pair and your weekly distance. The calculator works out what is left and roughly when to retire it.

The rule behind it: divide what is left by your weekly mileage. For a new pair you expect to last 400 miles (about 650 km):

Rotating two pairs does not change the total distance, but each pair lasts twice as long on the calendar.

Signs a pair is done

The number tells you when to start looking. These tell you it is time:

• The midsole creases and the creases stay when the shoe is off your foot.
• The outsole is smooth under the ball of your foot, or the foam shows through.
• The heel counter is soft or leans to one side when the shoe sits on a table.
• A pair that used to feel springy now feels flat.
• New aches in the shins, knees or hips after nothing else in your training changed. This is the loud version.

Why manual shoe logs fail

Every running app with gear tracking asks you to pick shoes after each run. That works for two weeks. Then you forget once, then twice, and the log is wrong forever. The problem is not discipline. It is that the app made the runner do the work.

Track mileage without tracking

Runtile turns it around: the app assigns, you correct.

1. Add a pair with the date you started running in it and the kilometres it already has.
2. Runtile assigns every run from that date to that pair. Add a second pair with a later date and it takes over from there. Overlaps go to your default pair and are marked as guessed.
3. New runs go to your default pair on their own. Run in more than one pair? An optional notification half an hour after each run offers up to four pairs as buttons. One tap.

Each pair shows total kilometres, a bar toward the retirement distance you set (500 to 1000 km), weeks left at your current rate, average pace and heart rate in that pair, and cost per kilometre if you enter the price. At 85 percent the bar turns red. When you cross the line, one notification, then quiet.

Rotating pairs

With two active pairs, Compare shoes puts them side by side: pace, heart rate, and pace at the same heart rate, so you can see which pair you run easier in. If one pair is doing more than 70 percent of your recent kilometres, Runtile mentions it.

Bringing your history

If you kept shoes in Strava, import your Strava shoe history. Runtile matches your Strava gear to the runs in Health and creates the pairs for you.