You’re ready to lace up for all of your big running season plans, whether those plans mean starting a run-walk training plan or PRing a marathon. And today is the day to look into your closet, pick up your running shoes and ask yourself if they’re actually getting the job done.

“Running shoes are really your equipment for your sport,” Conor Cashin, the product line manager for running footwear at Puma said.

Cashin, by the way, spent his entire professional life positioning himself for this role. As a lifelong runner and sneaker-culture devotee, his shoe knowledge was leveled up by spending time working at specialty running stores (the stores where all you can buy is running shoes and other items dedicated to the sport of running).

And his team creates lines of shoes that are perfect for runners who put one foot in front of the other on all sorts of terrain and train for lots of different distances. This made him just the expert we needed to talk to as we prepare for the running season.

Our biggest question was how many pairs of shoes do we really need?

First consideration: What terrain are you running on this season?

For runners who plan to do both road and trail running this season, Cashin says that you should get a shoe that specializes in two types of terrain.  

Road: Road shoes are designed to be grippy on concrete, pavement, gravel maybe, track and treadmill. A runner can use road shoes in the gym and on a track.

Trail: Trail shoes are made specifically for running in the great outdoors. Their outsoles – or the piece of hard material on the bottom of the shoe – are very rugged and are meant to grip on dirt and gravel. A great example of a trail shoe designed to empower you to enjoy the trail instead of worrying about slipping is the PUMA Voyage Nitro 2.

Indoor running: If you plan to run on a treadmill indoors, you can make your road shoes work for you indoors, but that comes with a warning from Cashin: “You would never want to take a trail shoe on the road or in the gym … it potentially would be more slippery on the concrete than it would be on dirt,” Cashin said.

The second consideration: What are you going to do in the shoes?

If you’re embarking on marathon training, Cashin has a specific benchmark for you. He said you’ll want three pairs of shoes in your marathon training rotation. If you’ve ever heard that you should rotate your shoes, you’re not alone. But I was today years old when I learned why.

“When you’re rotating your shoes from day to day, you’re giving your feet and legs different stimuli – you’re going to work different muscles in your feet,” Cashin said. “We have more cushioned shoes for long runs, we have lighter shoes for faster runs. So that’s really the purpose of rotating your shoes. You’ll have a long run so you’ll want to use the most cushioned shoe for the most miles. You’ll have a speed day and maybe you’ll go to a track or run hills, you’ll want a lighter shoe that makes you feel faster.”

Let’s break it down.

Staple shoe: this is the shoe in which you’ll want to do about half of your training mileage. From the Puma Running family, Cashin recommends the Velocity NITRO 2. “You can do anything in that shoe,” he said, citing the responsive cushioning grip of the shoe. If we want to make a car reference, this is your commuter van – it gets the job done every day and it doesn’t complain.

A workout shoe: This is the shoe that you’ll wear for your speed runs, your hill workouts or anything that requires a little more oomph. Cashin recommends the PUMA Deviate NITRO 2. Let’s continue the car reference: this is a sports sedan – it has the faster engine and the sportier features, but the seats are still ultra-plush and heated.

A racing shoe: A racing shoe is the shoe that you count on to cross the finish line in at your best race time of the season. It’s lighter, so the materials are usually a little different and more pared down. The Puma family’s racing shoe is the Deviate NITRO Elite. This is the shoe in which Molly Seidel won the Olympic bronze medal for the marathon. If this shoe were a car, it would be the race cars that are built to win – they’re so light and compact that even the steering wheel is removable.

A shoe for your strength workouts: If you’re not doing any running in a strength workout, you’ll want a completely different shoe. Look for footwear built for stability that’s firmer, flatter and flexible. The Puma Fuse – is the multi-purposed training shoe that Cashin recommends.

The third consideration: How frequently will you need to replace your shoes?

There’s a rule of thumb for replacing running shoes that you’ll hear from almost every running expert. After running 300 to 500 miles in them. 

But what if you, like me, do not track your mileage? Cashin said there are tried and true indicators. 

“You can really tell when a running shoe is dead – it stops giving back to you,” he shared that he means the bouncy feeling you experience in a newer running shoe will deplete and you’ll feel more of the road. He shared that if you’re wearing a shoe that has reached the end of its life, you may also feel some aches and pains in your joints or in your muscles and the shoe will stop fitting as well as it did originally.

Fourth and finally: Where can you find shoe expertise?

Cashin encourages new runners and runners who may be ready to change up their footwear to visit their local running store and ask a lot of questions.

“The people who work there are usually passionate,” he said. “They want you to come in and they want to talk to you about shoes. You’re going to get to try on a bunch and likely go outside and run in them on the spot, which is also really valuable.”

“It’s nice to talk to someone who just speaks running,” he said, explaining that the running store and fitting process are some of his favorite pieces of running culture.