I have started running again. The past four years of school have really put me out of shape. Most of my time has been spent sitting around the computer or at my desk reading so I haven’t done much exercising. I have been playing basketball once a week for the past few months, which has helped, but my body is still telling me that I’m not up to par.

Since I’m planning to run about 2-3 times a week from now on I decided to go out and buy a pair of running shoes. I haven’t bought actual “running” shoes in a long time so I didn’t know what to expect price-wise. I was shocked to see that these things sell for upwards of $120-150! Being on a tight budget I  definitely had to find something less-expensive than that. This is when something Rita told me a while ago clicked in.

She had said she heard of a study showing that more expensive running shoes don’t usually perform any better than mid or lower-priced shoes. This hearsay sounded good to me so I went out in search of a cheap pair of shoes. The lower-priced shoes that I came across were $49.99 but I ended up going for a $59.99 pair of Adidas (pictured above) just because they fit and felt better. Hey, I was still saving some hard-earned dollars by not buying the $130 Asics or Nikes.

When I got home I decided to do a little googling to see if I could find out more about this study Rita was talking about. As it turns out, there are many studies arguing that more expensive shoes are no better than regular runners. For instance, this 2002 study by Consumer Reports states:

“Paying more than $100 does not necessarily get you a better shoe. The less expensive shoes outperformed their costlier brandmates in four out of seven cases. In fact, our two highest-scoring shoes were the less expensive Adidas and Reebok models. And we found no consistent correlation between price and performance in the key attributes we considered–not cushioning, flexibility, fit, or stability.”

Pretty interesting huh? You can see other studies here and here. Overall, I’m glad I opted for the less-expensive shoes. Now all I have to do is get out there and use them!

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