500 – 700 miles would you say?  That’s pretty much the general consensus.  That’s when all the clever engineering in them starts breaking down and you start getting niggles and you need to fork out another £80 or something.  I’m not going to argue with that or to advise you otherwise.  If I advised you to keep wearing your shoes for (let’s say) 2,000 miles and you got a knee injury then you’d probably turn around and sue me.  Only you wouldn’t succeed because the judge would think you were very silly to take advice from a random blog.

And anyway, bloggers seem to have a special shield from the law.  You can pretty much type any old twaddle, or libel people recklessly, or tell packs of fibs and you can get away with it in the blogosphere.  You can here in Jersey anyway where the loony fringe get away with whatever they wish – perhaps our ancient customary law provides bloggers with such immunity.

But anyway, my trusty Asics Gel Cumulus have passed the 2,000 mile mark (my previous pair did 1,500 or thereabouts.)  Let’s have a look at them – pretty battered and filthy right enough.  Worn at the heels (showing I don’t always footstrike as I wish and imagine) and no doubt tests would show that the cushioning is pretty knackered.  But they’re still a fair way from falling apart.  And crucially I’m not injured and have got no niggles whatsoever.

There are those who would insist that you need gait analysis, the proper shoe to compensate for your foot shape and all the rest of the science that is peddled by the overblown running shoe industry.  But even they are beginning to admit (by very slow degrees so as not to banjax their whole raison d’etre) that maybe the human foot is best left to its own devices, except where people have a genuine imbalance problem which is worsened by running.

So when do I ditch my shoes?  I don’t know – maybe I’ll invest in a new pair but keep them on standby.  Let’s see if we can make 2,500.

Meanwhile I’ve done pretty much no running in anticipation of starting my 18-week marathon programme next week.  Also, on Tuesday my Couch to 5k class via Highlands College begins.  You can follow how we are getting on if you click the C25k tab above.  I’m also going to do more evening training as opposed to early mornings.  I only really started running before work because it’s pretty impossible to train in the evenings living in Dublin city centre.  Jersey’s easier in that regard so I’ll be taking advantage.