Cost per Mile

Thanks to Running Ahead and its handy equipment tracker/calculator, I can keep track of how many miles are on my shoes.  Because I run in a lot of different shoes.  And by a lot, I really mean A LOT!  Right now, I have 6 pairs of shoes that I could wear on any given day. 

Each shoe has its purpose though.  I have two old pairs of shoes - they are my old orange Brooks ghost 3 and old blue Brooks ghost 3s.  They each have 483 and 529 miles respectively and I don't wear them much at all.  I go to the orange pair first if I need to and will only wear these shoes on days when I am running speed work and its going to be rainy.  If those two conditions aren't met then they just sit on the shelf.  Soon both these shoes will be out of rotation.

Next there is my purple Brooks Ghost 5.  These are my marathon shoes and although they have 527 miles on them, I am finding it hard to give these shoes up.  For all the miles they have taken me, these shoes have lasted a pretty long time.  I also have my pink Mizuno Wave Rider 13 which I originally bought to use as my cross training shoes but somehow managed to put them into my running shoe rotation.  The mizunos are only used for easy morning runs and can be interchanged with the Ghost 5s if needed.  The Ghost 5s can be used for long runs but will be soon out of rotation.

I have two pairs of shoes that I use solely for racing and speed work.  These pair of shoes are my Brooks Pure Flows and my Adidas Adizero shoes.  I bought the Flows in order to make the transition to a more minimalist shoe and I love them.  I ran my last half marathon race in them and have done all my speedwork in them since the summer.  I have been racing 5ks in my Adidas shoes for over a year and I love them.  I bought them because I had a gift certificate from winning a race at a random local triathlon store.  They are very light and I love racing in them.

This is the most shoes I have ever had in rotation and I can still remember (~ 2 years ago) when I only had one pair of running shoes at a time.  It may seem like a lot of shoes but in fact, I have only bought two new pairs in 2012 - the Ghost 5s and the Flows.

I seemed to have gotten a little off track there - back to the original point of this post - The cost per mile of my shoes.

Each time I get a new pair of shoes, I enter the name of that shoe into the equipment on Running Ahead.  I label my shoes by their brand name plus color.  I started this when I had my blue Ghost 3s and my orange Ghost 3s otherwise I would have confused them.  After naming the shoe, I then enter in how much each shoe cost. And then the calculator does the math as I enter in my miles each day.

My  most expensive shoes have been the Brooks Ghost series. And although I have spent the most money on those shoes, all four pairs that I have owned (3 pairs of Ghost 3 and 1 pair of Ghost 5), I have run over 500 miles in each of them and my average cost per mile is 18.5 cents.    When broken down like that, spending the money on the shoes doesn't seem all that bad.  And I really always try to get my monies worth on everything I buy.

How much do your shoes cost per mile???