It’s Tuesday and that means another look at some new piece of athletic tech that will hopefully make you run like a gazelle, jump like a kangaroo, and keep your knees in good enough shape that you can still walk at 50. This week we’ll be looking at the Mino. We all know that running shoes don’t last forever. They take a lot of wear and tear over the miles we put them so that our knees and ankles don’t. The general rule for replacing running shoes is every 400 miles and we can do a good job keeping track of that in our heads, but what if you had something that simply told you how many miles you had put on a pair?
Enter the Mino. The Mino is a small tab that fits in the bottom of your shoes and keeps track of the shape that your shoes are in. Using the average of 600 compressions in a mile, the Mino records how far you’ve gone and displays on a series of LED lights how close your shoes are to needing to be replaced. It’s less thick than a nickel so it’s difficult to feel in your shoes and is generally unnoticeable when it comes to actually running with it. It’s a neat little thing and will probably give you some surprising results when you realize how fast your shoes are actually wearing out compared to where you thought they were. Each Mino runs about $15 and lasts for one pair of shoes.