Recently, I did a little house cleaning. While attacking my closet I sorted through a nightmare of shoes. Yes, I have far more shoes than your average guy. Not as many as Imelda Marcos, but far more than average. I learned long ago that it's well worth the money to treat your feet right and pay extra for good shoes than suffer injury and pain from the cheap ones.After sorting out a bunch of my "pre-runner" shoes, the shoes I ran in before becoming a serious runner (pre-2008), I was left with six pairs of shoes currently in the rotation! SIX PAIRS! Yes, I think I do have a running problem. I don't even currently own six surfboards. Well, I almost own that many, but still... I'm not buying anymore running shoes for a least a few months. Yup, I'm putting my foot down!
So what about all those other pre-running shoes? The old Adidas, Nike & Timberlines (I'm pretty hardcore Brooks-everything these days)? Jenny says I should donate them to be recycled at a local running specialty store or at an race expo. I have my own shoe recycling program. It goes something like this:
First - Use as casual walking shoes until they really start to break down.
Next - Move to the back porch and hide under the table. Now they are used as yard work or lawn mowing shoes never to see the inside of the house again. They stay here until they break down further and then are moved to...
Finally - Emergency boat shoes. I shove them into a small compartment on my boat or kayak. If I need them to walk through mud or across oyster bars they will serve me well.
If the running specialty stores want them after I'm done with them they can have them.
So what do you do with your old running shoes???
I only have two pair in my running rotation, which much like yours turn into a casual walking shoe. If I accumulate too many casual walking shoes they go to the recycle biin at the running store.
ReplyDeleteThat's a lot of shoes. I only have one pair of running shoes right now, although I could probably do just fine with having another or two.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Jenny - recycle! I take all of ours to the Nike store for their re-use a shoe program that crushes them up and uses in track surfaces. There are other programs, but some require "slightly used" shoes because they actually give them to people and by the time we're done with them, they're trashed.
mine become walking shoes and I keep an old but not really old pair in my car for emergency running purposes. Then I donate them. Or sometimes if I go on vacation I take an old pair with me and leave them there (less to bring back). I usually leave them somewhere that hopefully a homeless person will find them and have some 'new' sneakers.
ReplyDeleteOh, I really like Maggs' method of leaving them with the homeless after vacation and having less to bring home! That's awesome. I've known surfers that have left their boards with local kids down in Nicaragua or Ecuador rather than pay the airline rapage charge coming home. I've always wanted to do that, but maybe I'll start with my shoes on the next trip!
ReplyDeleteI have to confess, I tend to rotate them through a similar process until they are hidden somewhere. I'm tempted to see if I can rotary throw them tied together up to catch a power line. I have like 4 pairs that are retired from running.
ReplyDeleteBoating shoes are very important to have! :)
ReplyDeleteMy oldies are used for two purposes:
1) Herding cattle (don't wanna get cow manure on my nice shoes
2) Muddy Buddy shoes!
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