Mind you, having bought some new shoes, I should probably at least give them a bit of a go :-)

Oh, definitely -- if nothing else, you need shoes to wear while your other ones are off being re-soled.

And having at least two pairs of shoes means you can designate one as your comfy pair while the others are the new tight technical pair, or whatever.

But the beauty of re-soling is that for half the price of a new pair of shoes, you get your perfectly-broken-in old shoes but with fresh rubber. Which is a pretty excellent combination.