Your Race-Day Sneakers Have Done Their Job
You know the pair sitting in the back of the closet, behind the shoes you actually wear, and you haven’t run in them in years.
Maybe they carried you through your first half marathon. Maybe they were on your feet when you finally broke four hours, or when you crossed a finish line you weren’t sure you’d reach. The laces still have that double knot you tied in the corral. You’ll never wear them again, and you can’t quite bring yourself to throw them out.
That feeling makes sense, because those shoes were there for something hard that you did anyway, and keeping them feels like keeping the race.
But you already have a better keepsake for that race, and it’s hanging on your medal rack.
Your medal rack already holds the memory
Walk past your medal rack and you’ll remember every race on it. You remember the weather, the mile where it fell apart, and who was waiting at the finish. The medal does that job every day, right where you can see it.
The shoes do that job from a dark corner of the closet, where you see them once a year when you’re looking for something else. Meanwhile the cushioning keeps breaking down and the rubber keeps aging, so every year they sit there they get closer to being shoes nobody can use.
Take the photo first
Before they go anywhere, give them a proper send-off.
- Line them up next to the medal from the race they ran.
- Get the worn tread, the faded colors, and the bib if you still have it.
- Write the race, the date, and your finish time on the back of the print, or in the caption if it lives on your phone.
Some runners print the photo and hang it on the medal rack, and others frame it next to the bib. Either way, you end up with something that tells the story better than a shoe box ever did, and it takes up a lot less room.
Then send the shoes somewhere they’ll be worn
A shoe that’s past its racing days can still be a great everyday shoe. The cushioning that can’t handle another 26.2 is plenty for someone who walks to work or stands on their feet all day.
That’s where GotSneakers comes in, because our team inspects every pair you send and decides whether it can be worn again. Pairs that pass get cleaned and sent into the secondhand market, at home and abroad, where someone else puts real miles on them. Pairs that can’t be worn again get recycled into materials for things like countertops, insoles, and new footwear. None of them end up in a landfill.
Keeping a pair in use matters more than it sounds, since each pair kept in use averts about 30 pounds of CO2e, roughly what it takes to make a new pair. Across all of our partners, that’s added up to more than 192 million pounds so far.
Your race shoes already carried you through something hard, and somebody else can get years of everyday wear out of them.
While you’re in the closet
If you’ve been running for a while, the race-day pair probably isn’t alone. There’s the pair you retired at 400 miles and the trail shoes that never quite dried out.
A GotSneakers collection bag holds 10 to 12 pairs. Fill one with everything you’ve retired, and you’ll get paid by eCheck for each eligible pair, along with a report showing the environmental impact of what you sent in. The kit and the shipping are free.
If you run with a club, bring a bag to your next group run. Every runner there has the same closet, and a full bag from the whole club fills up fast. For more on what to do with the rest of the pile, read what to do with old running shoes.
A few things to know before you send them
- Send them as a pair. Single shoes can’t be accepted.
- Running shoes and casual sneakers qualify. Boots, heels, wedges, dress shoes, and water shoes don’t.
- Knock off the dried mud and make sure they’re dry.