Both of these observations are so very true, at least for me too.

The nice thing about "nearly new shoes that sit in the back of the closet" is that they can be used quite a lot for local trips. Of late I've been using these "don't work for long backpacking trip" shoes for running and local walking. Because it's around the 50 mile mark for me too where trouble occurs with shoes that (in my case) aren't *quite* wide enough in the toe box. But doing local walks in single digits and low double digit distances doesn't generally cause a problem. It'll take me some years, but I'll use these up.