I got new running shoes over the weekend. But I didn’t just walk into Sport Authority and pick the prettiest ones off the shelf like I did last time, I went to the New York Running Company and got properly fitted for a new pair of running shoes.

The fitting is done through a gait analysis, which determines if you’re a  pronator, supinator or have a neutral step.

I was pretty sure that I was a supinator from the way that my old sneakers wore out, and I told the guy helping me that, but he made me jump on the treadmill anyway, so that he could record my running to make sure.

Turns out I was way wrong. The sneaker wear actually indicated a mid-foot strike, which is muy bueno, but I am actually a pronator! When you pronate, your foot rolls inward as you run and you need a more stable shoe to correct the pronation. A stable shoe provides more medial support and keeps your ankle from turning. If you’re the opposite, a supinator, you need a more neutral shoe with midsole cushioning to provide extra shock absorption that the lack of pronation causes.

You can see how my foot rolls inward when I run in shoes that don’t provide enough stability. The salesman (whose name I forgot! :/) told me that even though I had no trouble running in my neutral shoes for now, as my millage increases, I could be more prone to pain and injury because of my foot rolling inward. He also told me to save my old shoes for gardening because they were way too worn out to run in. Oops!

I had my foot measured and even though I wear a 9 1/2 or 10 in normal shoes, he told me it was important to size up in running shoes to ensure that your toes aren’t repeatedly being crushed into the front of the shoe and so that there is room for your foot to swell a little when running longer distances.

The shoes in the store are set up by type, so once you know what kind of shoe you need, you just find the right row and choose. For me it was between a pair of Brooks Adrenaline and Nike Zoom Structure+ 15. In the end, the Nike’s won out because the Brooks were a little too wide in the toe and I felt like my foot was moving around in the too much.

I’ve run about 10 miles in the new shoes and they feel great! I will be tracking the mileage on these shoes so I don’t wait too long to get new ones like I did with my old ones. It is recommended that you should switch out your shoes every 300-400 miles, so once these babies hit around 300, I’ll start looking into some new ones. Hopefully these will give me lots of good miles!

Have you ever had a gait analysis done? What kind of running shoes do you use?

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