How to track all miles on a pair of shoes?

NorthCascades
NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I'm hoping there's an easy way that I'm not thinking of.

I'm getting over a slow healing foot injury. There's a particular shoe that helps me a lot. Other shoes give me a long lasting dull ache, these do too if I let them wear out. It takes a few days to notice and it takes a few days to go away after I realize and fix it. So I'd like to figure out when to replace them before that happens, but they're expensive and I don't want to retire them too early.

Making it harder, I wear a different shoe to hike.

I use a Garmin. The gear feature only applies to activities, not to daily life, it won't let me add a pair of shoes to "today," and the progress summary doesn't do steps. Is there something I don't know about that can tell me, or do I need to track it with a spreadsheet?

Replies

  • Diatonic12
    Diatonic12 Posts: 32,344 Member
    Rig your shoes up with pedometers in the laces. Voila. Toss when needed. Your mileage may vary...from mine.
    Happy Halloween.
  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,744 Member
    I track my activities on runningahead.com I track the shoes I wear walking and running there so I know how many miles they have. Although my Garmin uploads my runs and walks automatically, if I use the watch for them and save the result, it doesn't include my steps for the day. You could add a 'steps' activity category or "general walking" category and put your daily step count/mileage, minus deliberate walks or runs, on there. Or more simply, keep a spreadsheet with your daily step count/mileage.
  • pondee629
    pondee629 Posts: 2,469 Member
    How long did it take for your last pair shoes to wear out and hurt you? Mark your calendar to get a new pair that far from when you bought your current pair. If you significantly increase/decrease your walking adjust accordingly.
  • tulips_and_tea
    tulips_and_tea Posts: 5,741 Member
    I use Strava and it lets you add different shoes and tracks the mileage on each but only when actively using the app. It wouldn't work for every day wear I don't think.
  • xodreamariexo
    xodreamariexo Posts: 63 Member
    I know many many years ago when I used the Nike+running app they had a feature for this. They may still. However you would have to run the app any time while wearing the shoes, not just running.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Interesting problem and annoying for Garmin.

    Of course none of the other sites are going to deal with non-workout miles, nor would you really want to be manually adding your daily mileage that Garmin already has calculated, which would include manually subtracting hiking miles in other shoes.

    I'm going with cheap pedometer if you actually walk enough in them, some are pretty small now. Would seem to have the least requirement to be manually dealing with figures.

    But if the day includes a decent amount of standing, wouldn't that tend to break it down to an extent, in which case per time would be better factor. Haven't seen if the simple pedometers have a # of days counting to combine the 2.

  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    I want to thank everyone for sharing your thoughts. 🙂 🤗

    @heybales that's a great point about standing, and I have a standing desk setup.

    Since you mentioned a pedometer I wonder if it's possible to get a small mechanical one and attach it to the shoe. 🙂

    It's starting to rain a lot and I'll probably get a few more pairs to rotate. Meaning come back from a walk with cold wet feet, and be able to do another one later without having to wait for them to dry first. I'm in Seattle, it's going to rain almost every day until April.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Wow - you totally reminded me I intended to rotate shoes on uneven replacement basis. And forget to bring in the new shoes about 1/2 into life of current pair.

    Figure make it easier to avoid potential injury problems we seem to have on old shoes, allows for comparing and feeling the difference between really fresh and nearing the end.

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