Must you always wear the same running shoe?

It is said that runners are a non-violent people. Sure they’re motivated, focused, and competitive but not outwardly aggressive, manipulative, or combative. Heck, you’d want one as your neighbor.

But start messing with their running shoes and well don’t be surprised if your house gets TP’d (**that’s “toilet papered” for anyone who has NEVER seen any college related movie).

That’s right, for years, nothing more sacred existed than the runner-shoe relationship. I know anecdotally of runners who would buy upwards of 5 to 10 pairs…of the SAME $100+ running shoe just so they wouldn’t be without their favorite pair leading into a goal race.

Personally, I remember years back very frantically having to buy a new pair of Saucony’s seven short days before my second marathon ever. My current shoes were so torched I knew that running in any new pair would be better than adding even one more mile in those tread-less ghosts of their former selves.

But I had a problem. I was a student in Geneva, Switzerland at the time, far from my favorite local running shop in Boston. While my french was adequate for ordering a croissant, I quickly noticed my vocabulary hadn’t extended to “toe box” “heel drop” “arch support” and “moderate to neutral stability”. Plus the shoe models were different here, so I couldn’t just grab my favorite ones off the wall. After a painful hour and a lot of hand gestures, I hoped for the best and picked the closest pair I could. Seven days later, and minor chafing aside, my race went off without a hitch and I moved on to my next race.

Only now I clung to this NEW pair of Euro Sauconys, which you can only imagine created more running store heartache when I moved on to other foreign countries and finally back home.

Now ten years and thousands of miles later, I realize the shoes don’t matter. Or to put it more fairly, they don’t nearly as much as I thought.

Watch this video to see all the different running shoes I now run in on a regular basis and why.

Want more shoe related content? Check out this video we did on how to find the best running shoes for you with one of our favorite Bay area running shoe experts.

Running Strong (in a little bit of everything),

Nate & Craig

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