Fine-tune your shoes

One of the great pleasures in buying a new car, besides giving your favorite bank a few years of steady income, is selecting the extra treats offered by the dealer. They're called options -- things you don't really need but can have if you want, assuming, of course, that your banker is willing to go along.

If you like music, you can add a slick stereo complete with CD player, digital tuning, and big speakers. (And if you like to irritate others, you can add one of those bass booster gizmos and turn your car into an earthquake on wheels, rattling windows, sternums, and nerves everywhere you go.)

If you drive in a high-crime area (inevitably the first exit you take when lost in a strange city), you can add an obnoxious alarm that shrieks for 20 very long minutes every time someone else with one of those bass booster things drives by.

It's only right that you can customize your car to fit your special needs and unique tastes (or lack of the same). It is, after all, a major investment that will be an important part of your life for the next 5 years/50,000 miles or so.

As with cars, so with running shoes. Though they will be part of your life for only maybe five months and 500 miles, there are options available if you need to tweak them to achieve near-perfection. And you don't even need the approval of your banker. (At least, not yet.)

No, I'm sorry, that stereo thing is not one of the options. We can't have you going thumpa-thumpa around the neighborhood at 5 a.m., rattling china, waking up dogs, and terrifying newspaper carriers. Today's running shoes are pretty amazing, but they have their limitations.

No, shoe options aren't nearly as glamorous or sexy as cacophonous electronics, power this-and-that, and supple leather seats, but they can play a key role in how well your shoes work for you.

While it may seem that the selection of shoes on the market is plenty big to accommodate all human running needs, the selection of runners on the planet is even more abundant. Some feet are tough to fit, and some biomechanics are tricky to support. The answer is to fine-tune shoes with features that can be easily added in your dealer's showroom.

The best way to adjust the support in a close-but-not-quite-right shoe is to replace the fifty-cent piece of fluff called the sockliner. It's so support-free and comfort-challenged that the industry doesn't even call it an insole, opting instead to name it as if it were nothing more than an accessory to your socks. It's removable for one very simple reason: So it can be replaced with a device that really does something.

You might think that a pair of shoes that cost a day's pay or more should come with more sophisticated support. But, adding a specialized insert would bump the price of shoes to an even more dramatic level, and it might not deliver the special kind of support you need. And it wouldn't be fair to the roughly 60 or 70 percent of the running population who do just fine with the cheap-o sockliner.

Say, for example, that you're a moderate overpronator. That is, your feet roll inward during foot strike just slightly beyond neutral, and you need a shoe that gently corrects the extra motion back to an acceptable level.

A heavy-duty motion-control shoe with a bulky straight last, a huge medial post in the midsole, and maybe some plastic reinforcement in the heel area could certainly accomplish that, but it might also be overkill. You may solve one problem but create a couple of others.

So you find a less stable shoe that fits your feet well, feels good, and is well within your credit limit. You can add some motion control with a stabilizing insole that supports the arch and locks the heel in place. One of my favorite insoles is Superfeet, because it's lightweight and really grabs the heel, but other good ones are made by Spenco, Implus (Sof Sole), Spectrum (Sorbothane), and FASTech.

If, on the other hand, your shoe is stable enough but a little firm, you can add cushioning with various products from most of the same manufacturers. Products range from a thin sliver of an insert to add a little to a thick mattress of an insert to add a lot. A thin insert takes up almost no room but may not add enough cushion; a thick insert may be so thick it changes the way the shoe fits (making it an option if you need extra cushioning and a tighter fit).

Those thin inserts may raise the foot in the shoe just enough to solve another fairly common problem. If you have ever bought shoes that felt great in every way, but caused a mysterious ankle pain after your first run, you're a candidate for this option. That pain is often caused by the ankle bone banging against the top of the side wall of the shoe. Install a thin insert under the sockliner and it will usually lift the foot just enough to stop the abuse.

It's important to remember that these over-the-counter shoe inserts are options that can adjust, but not replace, the support of a shoe. Too often, runners attempt to revitalize old shoes with new insoles. Inserts can add cushioning, add stability, improve fit, or deliver some combination of all three, but they cannot give new life to that which is very dead.

It's kind of like installing a fancy new stereo in a beat-up old car with a hundred thousand miles of history behind it. Nice music, but, uhh, where's that smoke coming from?

J.D. Denton, aka "Shoe Guy," is a senior writer for Running Times. He owns Fleet Feet Sports in Davis, Calif., and runs with the Golden Valley Harriers, an RRCA club.