Yesterday, I noticed that my sneakers looked particularly worn out. Moreover, I noticed a significant hole in the left one. I discovered this hole while passing through a puddle. The insides are fairly worn as well, as are the bottoms. I took note of this mostly because it felt like I’d just purchased these shoes.

I don’t buy new shoes often, and I usually allow them to wear down. But this seemed unusually fast. It turns out that, time-wise, it was pretty fast, but wear-wise, these shoes have been through a lot, thanks to my daily walking.

I checked my Evernote timeline and found the receipt for my shoes, purchased on September 24, 2013, just under 6 months ago. I then checked my FitBit data and discovered that, in that six month period, I have walked nearly 1.84 million steps into these shoes. That’s about 900 miles worth of walking, day in and day out. If you consider that, on days where I can’t get my usually walking in, I only manage about 4,000 steps in regular activity, then you can see that these shoes would normally last me well over a year. But I tend to put between 15,000 – 20,000 steps a day in and so the wear and tear happens much faster.

My receipt from September indicates that I paid $64 for this pair of shoes. From that number, and the number of steps I’ve taken since, you can calculate some interesting rates. For instance, on a per-step basis, I paid 1/3000th of a cent per step. Looking at it another way, you can say that it costs me 7-cents to walk one mile in these shoes.

I am, of course, on the market for new shows. I’m looking for sneakers that are great for walking and are very comfortable as well. And if I can make them last to 2 million steps, then all the better. Any suggestions? Drop them in the comments.