Saucony Triumph 19 - 1,100 mile review
Since about July of 2022, I’ve been using the Saucony Triumph 19 as my daily run shoe and long run shoe. I originally bought these because of two reasons; the primary reason was the price. As someone who is running anywhere between 35-40 miles per week, I need something that will last me a decently long time while also not costing full MSRP (if possible — but this isn’t a deal breaker). The other reason is that I had heard that the cushion in these shoes were really nice. This is important for long runs obviously where offsetting the amount of time until muscle fatigue is a primary goal, but also for daily runs it helps a lot when it comes to recovery. The more I can run every day without worrying about foot/ankle/leg fatigue = mad gainz.
My first pair was unfortunately cut short. At roughly 250 miles (according to my private notes), the upper on the left shoe started to tear away from the midsole on the medial side of the shoe. This surprised me because these shoes were supposed to be very durable, and for a defect of this caliber at only 250 miles doesn’t really bode well. Initially, I thought this might’ve been caused by the shoe not being wide enough, even though I have a normal width foot.
I opened a support ticket with Saucony and they were awesome. Without questions (other than the initial ticket questions), they shipped me a brand new pair for free. I continued to run in the original pair for another 100 miles until the torn upper became too severe, so I finally switched. In hindsight, I think the culprit for the tearing was kind of obvious. When I first got the shoes, I wasn’t super stoked about the laces they put on the shoes. I swapped them out with Nathan’s Run Laces, mostly because I had these already for trail running shoes. If I had to guess, the elastic laces were putting more pressure on the upper which probably made the tearing worse. For the future shoes, I didn’t change the laces.
My second pair were a lot better. I took these to 416 miles before retiring them. These shoes had a slight tear on the upper on the same spot as the first pair, but it never got even close to being as bad. Again, I think the width might have also been an issue but it’s hard to say after putting hundreds of miles on a shoe.
My final pair of shoes I also got on sale for like $50 which was an absolute steal. I just now semi-retired these shoes, although they have 394 miles on them. I could probably squeeze a bit more out of them, but I would probably only do this for daily runs.
Overall, I feel like I have to recommend these shoes after putting so many miles on them. They treated me well and never caused any issues like blistering or other injuries. For the price you can get them for now, they are pretty much a no brainer, and I really don’t see a reason to not recommend them to anyone who is new to running. The only reason I am not buying another pair is just because I want to try something new. However, I will definitely be back on the Triumph train once the 20s are on a deep sale. I am excited to try them with the newer foam that was added in that version. For now, I am using the Craft Pro Endur Distance which I, of course, found on sale for $80. I completed my first long run with them (10.5 miles) and they worked great, and this is after a full week of running in them.