Looking after your running shoes: cleaning, drying and storing

Start with the only part of this that is urgent. Do not put running shoes in a washing machine, and never, under any circumstances, in a tumble dryer. People do both constantly, the shoes come out looking clean, and the damage is invisible until the ride goes strange a month later.

A midsole is a foam — EVA, TPU or one of the newer supercritical blends — and every one of them is a thermoplastic. Heat softens it, and foam that is softened while it is being squashed does not go back to the shape it started in. The adhesives are worse: a running shoe is glued, not sewn, at the joint between midsole and outsole and around the whole lower edge of the upper, and those bonds are the first thing a hot cycle attacks. A tumble dryer combines the heat with a hundred impacts against the drum.

A washing machine is milder but still wrong. The drum flexes the midsole against the upper thousands of times in ways running never does, detergents strip the water-resistant treatments off the mesh, and a spin cycle loads the shoe sideways at a speed nothing in its design anticipated. Some shoes survive it. You will not know which kind you own until afterwards.

Road shoes rarely need much. Dust, road film and the occasional puddle do very little harm, and a shoe that is merely grubby is a shoe that is working. Clean when the mesh has gone stiff with dried salt and grit, not on a schedule.

1. 1

   Take the laces and the insole out

   Both hide dirt, and both dry far faster on their own than inside the shoe. This one step does more for how a shoe smells than anything else you can do to it.

2. 2

   Knock off what is dry

   Clap the soles together outdoors and brush the loose grit out of the upper with a dry soft brush. Removing dirt dry is always gentler than working it around wet.

3. 3

   Wash the upper by hand, cold

   Cold or lukewarm water, a drop of mild soap, a soft brush or a cloth. Work in small circles and do not soak the shoe through if you can help it — you are cleaning a surface, not laundering a garment.

4. 4

   Rinse and squeeze, do not wring

   Rinse the soap out with clean water and press the water out with a towel. Twisting a shoe distorts the shape the heel counter is holding, and that shape is part of how it fits.

5. 5

   Wash the insole and laces separately

   Laces go in a bowl of soapy water and come out looking new. Insoles take a gentle scrub on both sides and need the longest drying time of anything in the shoe.

One thing worth checking while the shoe is clean and in your hands: the outsole. Wear patterns show up clearly on a washed sole, and a heel or forefoot worn through to the foam is a shoe near the end regardless of how the upper looks. When to replace running shoes covers what to look for.

Trail shoes are the ones that genuinely need cleaning, and they need it the same day. The 17 trail shoes in this catalogue score from 78 to 95 out of 100 for grip, and the difference between the top of that range and the middle is almost entirely lug geometry: depth, spacing and the gaps that let mud clear itself. Dried mud fills those gaps in.

A trail outsole packed with set mud is, functionally, a flat sole. You paid for a lug pattern and you are running on a brick. It also traps moisture against the rubber and against the glue line where outsole meets midsole, and the fine grit that comes with it works into the mesh, the seams and the gusset of the tongue, where it behaves like sandpaper every time the shoe flexes.

• Rinse the worst off outdoors with a hose or a watering can on low pressure, before the mud sets. Never a pressure washer — it drives grit into the seams and can lift the outsole bond.
• Use a stiffer brush on the outsole than you would ever use on the upper; the rubber does not care and the lug gaps need it.
• Work the grit out of the tongue gusset and around the eyelets, which is where it hides and where uppers usually fail first.
• If the mud has already dried hard, let the shoe sit in a bucket of cold water for twenty minutes and then brush. Soaking beats scraping.
• Check the rock plate area and the toe bumper for lifting edges while you are there — a small glue failure caught early is repairable.

Trail shoes take this abuse better than road shoes because they are built for it — the toughest shoe in this catalogue scores 92 out of 100 for durability and it is a trail model. That is a reason to clean them, not a reason to skip it. Road versus trail running shoes explains what that outsole is doing and why it is worth protecting.

Wet shoes want moving air at room temperature and nothing else. Loosen the laces right out, open the shoe as wide as it goes, pull the tongue forward and stand the pair somewhere with a draught — a hallway, an open window, near a fan. Not a radiator, not a wood burner, not a sunny windowsill, not the airing cupboard.

The reason is the one from the first section. Heat softens midsole foam and the adhesives holding the shoe together, and a shoe dried hot also shrinks and hardens through the upper, which changes how it fits before it changes how it rides. A radiator is not faster in any way that helps you.

Newspaper genuinely works, and it works by being changed. Crumple it loosely, stuff it into the toe box and the midfoot, and swap it for dry paper after an hour or two and again before bed. The paper pulls moisture out of the inside of the shoe where air circulates worst, and a soaked wad left in overnight simply holds the water where you put it. Dry the insoles flat and separately, and expect them to be the last thing ready.

Two small parts wear out long before the shoe does, and both are replaceable for very little money.

Laces

Laces stretch, fray at the eyelets and lose their grip on a knot. A stretched lace means you tighten harder to get the same hold, which puts pressure on the top of the foot instead of around the heel where you want it. A fresh pair costs almost nothing and can make a tired shoe feel secure again. Keep a spare set, and rotate them between pairs when you wash them — it is the cheapest fix in running. If a shoe has never felt locked down, though, the problem is more likely the lacing pattern or the fit itself: getting the fit right covers heel lock and the runner’s loop.

Insoles

The insole is a thin sheet of foam that takes the same compression cycles as the midsole from a much smaller starting thickness, so it flattens first. Take it out after every wet run, swap in a dry one from the other pair if you have it, and replace it outright when it has gone hard and shiny under the heel. A new insole in a mid-life shoe restores some of the comfort people mistake for the midsole failing.

Storage

Dry, out of sunlight, at ordinary room temperature, with room around them. A car boot in summer is a slow oven; a garage in winter is damp; the bottom of a gym bag is both. Foams age chemically as well as mechanically, and the two things that speed that up are heat and ultraviolet light — which is why a spare pair kept in a sunny window for a year is not the same pair you put there. Do not store them stuffed in a sealed plastic bag either; if they go away for a season, they go away dry and loosely boxed.

Here is the part most cleaning advice leaves out. Everything above genuinely extends the life of the upper, the outsole bond, the insole and the laces. It does very little for the midsole, and the midsole is usually what decides when a shoe is finished.

Foam dies from compression cycles. Each footfall crushes the cell walls a little and a fraction of that deformation is permanent; enough repetitions and the foam is thinner, firmer and returns less of what you put in. There is no cleaning product, no drying technique and no storage regime that reverses it. A spotless, beautifully kept pair with a thousand kilometres in the midsole is a worn-out shoe that looks new, and that is exactly the pair people keep running in.

This matters most in the shoes with the softest, liveliest foam. The carbon racers in this catalogue have a median durability score of 48 out of 100 against 80 for the unplated shoes, and no amount of care closes that gap — the same material properties that make them fast make them short-lived. Carbon plates and super-shoes goes into what that actually costs.

So treat care for what it is: it keeps the shoe pleasant, it stops the upper failing before the foam does, it makes a rotation practical, and it means you throw the pair away for the right reason rather than because the mesh split at the eyelet. Judge the shoe on the ride, not on the look of it. If you are not sure where yours stand, when to replace running shoes and the pillar, how to choose running shoes , are the two to read next.