Road or trail shoes when you run on both
Plenty of runners start on pavement and finish on a trail, or split the week between the two. The useful question is which surface most of your miles are on, and how rough the off-road part gets.
What a trail shoe adds
- Lugs: the studs on the outsole that grip loose ground. Current trail shoes in our catalog have lugs from 3 to 6 mm deep, median 4 mm.
- Weight: trail shoes are a little heavier. Men's median 10.1 oz, against 9.3 oz for road shoes.
Shoes made for both
Nine of the 24 current trail shoes are door-to-trail shoes, built for runs that mix pavement and trail: Brooks Cascadia 20, Brooks Divide 6, Altra Lone Peak 9+, ASICS GEL-Trabuco 14, Hoka Challenger 8, Hoka Speedgoat 7, Hoka Torrent 5, Merrell Agility Peak 6 and Topo Ultraventure 5. Their lugs run from 3.4 to 5 mm, median 3.6 mm, shallower than shoes for technical trail (median 4.5 mm, up to 6 mm).
Which way to lean
- Mostly pavement, with trails that are dry and smooth: a road shoe or a door-to-trail shoe.
- Mud, loose rock or steep ground: a trail shoe with deeper lugs.
- About half and half: a door-to-trail shoe, or one pair of each.
How our finder decides
- It asks where you run, up to three surfaces in order: road or sidewalk, treadmill, track, gravel, light trail or technical trail. Treadmill and track count as road; gravel counts as trail.
- If your list has both road and trail surfaces, it looks at road and trail shoes, starting with the one you ranked first.
- If your list has any trail surface, it also asks which surface this next pair is mainly for. Your answer (road, trail or both) comes before your list.
- Among trail shoes, technical trail ranked first favours shoes for steep, soft or rocky ground; gravel or light trail ranked first favours door-to-trail shoes, more so if you do easy or long runs.
- To see every current shoe side by side: road running shoes and trail running shoes.