The lightweight shoes (performance training, they are usually called) do not wear very well. The heavy rubber on the heels is usually thin and if you pronate or under pronate (supinate) you're gonna wear the heel down long before the 250-350 miles you should get out of the shoes. Even at $80-$100, that's not fun.
The performance training shoes are less expensive than some of the cushier flagship models, many of which never see serious running.
So what do you do? I tried many things over the years--shoe goo, silicone, etc,etc. All worked to some extent, but the labor in applying the material was a pain.
THEN, a few years ago, I was doing a sound system for an event in Long Beach (long story, but not relevant here) and needed some tape to fix the speaker and amp wires to the floor so no one could trip--big hotel and they were going to check it out before the event. I went to hardware store and saw that Gorilla (as in GLUE) now made duct tape--I figured their glue was good, so I bought a roll--a big roll. It was amazing--stuck well and was a bitch to pull off after the event. I had over half a roll left--and then the light bulb lit up. What would happen if I put a couple of layers on the heels of my running shoes and trimmed around the edge?
It worked VERY WELL. I have been using Gorilla Tape for 4 years now--3 layers will last an entire marathon on pavement. Running 30-40 miles a week just requires a tune up layer mid week.
You still need to replace your shoes when they loose their "spirit", but not because you wore the heels out in the first 100 miles.
The other cool thing is you can tailor the placement and amount to fit individual wear patterns--I don't wear heels out exactly the same on right and left foot (there are other injury stories in there--later!).
Give it a try and see how it works. Should work fine on forefoot areas too--for those biomechanically superior individuals. As you'll hear later I'm getting acclimated to Newton Gravity shoes now and so far the heels are pristine.
RW
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