Every endurance athlete and wannabe in the world—especially those who live in warm and humid places—know the summertime scourge of smelly and perpetually damp shoes. In my experience, it has gotten so bad that I could not open my shoe closet without being inundated with a wave of rotting shoe odor. Thankfully, there is an end-all solution to this.
First, let’s talk about why shoes get smelly. The simple answer is sweat. When you run, your feet sweat a lot; furthermore, thanks to Newton and his falling apple, sweat from the rest of your body tends to roll down and pool in your shoes. Unfortunately for you, your sweat is filled with smelly bacteria, which have now found themselves in a functional startup accelerator / breeding place called your shoes.
Shoes are the perfect place for bacteria to grow and expand, creating a giant colony of smelly little critters.
This is obviously good for the bacteria. But is it bad for the shoes?
Yes, very much so. You see, in addition to being smelly, these bacteria will eat anything in their way. That includes your shoe’s fibers. As they do this, they secrete the acidic and odorous waste that weakens the shoe structure, effectively ruining your gear even faster.
You see the problem. In addition to creating a rancid smell, these bacteria are the reason your shoes don’t last as long in the summertime.
Let’s talk about some of the potential remedies.
You could periodically wash your shoes. But that ruins their shape and fit.
You could stuff them with newspaper after each run. Yes, that will suck some of the moisture out. But it won’t get rid of the bacteria entirely, so it will only delay the onset of fetid odors and shoe-destroying enzymes.
Having ruled out the above, here is what you need to do:
- Rinse out your shoes, cleansing them of as much of the bacteria as you can. This is not too hard; just use regular water after each run. Chances are your shoes are already pretty soaked anyway.
- Dry them out as fast as possible, so that any bacteria that’s left dies immediately with no chance to reproduce.
Be careful here. You could throw your shoes in the dryer, but then they will get warped to shreds. You could strategically set up a hairdryer to blow warm air through them, while using 1.21 gigawatts and killing all the whales in the Pacific. Neither of these options are great.
At last we come to the smart solution: spend $40 and buy a DryGuy Simple Dry Boot and Glove Dryer. Through some combination of alchemy and magic (otherwise known as convective heating), the folks at DryGuy have managed to produce a wondrous machine that quietly and efficiently dries your stinky shoes in a few hours.
Forty bucks is a tiny investment for the return of saving your running gear over the summer—not to mention removing the misery of walking into closet or mudroom that reeks of noxious gas. The DryGuy boot dryer will end up make things easier for your feet, nose and wallet.
