What running trainers

[Iamblossom]

My Saucony Excursion trails have holes in them so about to buy another pair, but before I spend £138, thought I'd canvas opinion. I do a mix of road and trail running, about 35km a week.

how long is a piece of string...

tbh if you need to watch your budget decathlon own brand shoes are very good.

if you like what you had look at outlet stuff, last season is often just design change.

Personally I’d buy two pairs
road shoes if you got on with the sauconys id go for a pair of Jazz

trail id go for a specific off road brand, the Solomon parkclaw or innov8 terraultra assuming you aren’t doing any mad fell stuff (and I sure as hell hope you weren’t in a pair of sauncony!)
scott are also a decent shoe that are a bit cheaper but they won’t last as long.

Someone will jump on shortly insisting you get gait analysis but I genuinely feel it’s a bit of a con, as proper gait analysis can not be done in 3 mins on a treadmill by a sales assistant. It’s just a way to sell pricey support shoes that you probably don’t need.

Difficult to get a hybrid shoe that does both road and trail well so I would have one pair for road and another for trail.

My road are Asics GT 2009 which are very light but they are useless in mud.

Trail shoes I would go for something like Scott, Innov8, Saucony Peregrine which has deeper lugs which works well in mud, sand and gravel.

Go to a specialist shop and try several pairs before you commit. I had several brands in mind when I went shopping for trail shoes and the ones I thought were going to be suitable -Saloman Speedcross, were actually the worst pair for me.

When you say trail running, are you doing proper fell running (ie bogs, mud, steep hills) or just light well-made paths? If the former, you need two pairs of shoes - one for road, one for trail. If the latter, you could get away with a sturdier road shoe for everything.

I have lots of trail/fell shoes for different terrain. Inov8 are great for the properly technical stuff, but you don't need them on a bridleway or footpath - and if you did,, you'd only wear the lugs out quicker. Brooks Cascadia are a decent light trail shoe, or Saucony Exodus.

Agree with a pp that gait analysis is a con!

I do a mix of footpaths and road on my runs and have found normal trainers work done most of the time but I also have some grippy decathlon ones for when it's a bit muddy. I've also loved my ASICS goretex ones for longer trails but good luck getting them at the moment. Just don't get the on trainers with the stupid holes that stupid rocks get stuck in.

If you're going really off road in mud you do probably need a different pair too.