To All The Shoes I Loved Before
Kicks where I shoulda swiped left.
Can a running shoe break your heart?
Maybe not? But they are like your exes. Each pair starts with excitement and promise: your eye catches on the sheen of something new; shiny features captivate and, before you know it, you can’t help but dream of your lives together.
Some provide support and comfort but falter over time; others look flashy and stylish only to leave you blistered and disappointed. And some knock your socks off.
I’ve had many running-shoe relationships. Some were great, some were mediocre, and some went off the rails.
Here are three that went off the rails.
Shoe #1: “Extravagant leather lover seeking someone who can handle the heat.”
“LEMME TELL YOU. These are gonna BLAST your sales ALL THE WAY UP!”
The voice echoed through the running store as I walked back onto the sales floor after my lunch break. A sales representative was gesturing wildly, sounding like Al Pacino in Heat.
“One-hundred percent!” exhaled the sales rep to the store owner, who stood listening uncomfortably. “Yep, that’s one-hundred-percent bonafide pure yak leather!”
Sales reps are crucial nodes in the relationships between running stores and shoe brands. They help explain and sell owners and employees on new product. A level of excitement, a little razzle-dazzle, is expected. But this was something else.
“It’s breathable! It’s flexible! it FEELS great.” Slightly red in the face from the exertion, his average build framed a slight paunch. As I approached, the sales rep’s voice lowered, his cadence slowed. He turned to me. “I’m. Telling. You. Now,” he said, punctuating his words by softly poking my chest. “This is a game changer.”
In his hand—the one not poking me—was what appeared to be a white-leather driving glove dipped in toxic waste.
The rep’s eyes narrowed, anticipating his pitch’s climax. “Brother,” he said. “Once you go yak, you don’t go back.”
He handed me the shoe.
It was curvilinear, the midsole wrapping up the sides in organic tendrils of neon polyurethane that embraced a milky white upper of conditioned leather. It was soft, almost sensual to the touch.
“What do you think?” the store owner asked me. “We’ve never carried a leather running shoe. Want to try out a pair for us?”
I was hesitant. Recently, I’d tested a few smaller brands for the store and they tended to disappoint. Now here was a shoe, called the Biom, from a Danish brand adapting its existing leather shoe line. It cost $220 dollars, an eye-popping amount at the time, over twice the price for the average shoe.
What can I say? I am easily wooed by extravagance. So I tried them out.
Once on, they ran well. I took the shoes through their paces along some city streets. Flexible, just enough cushion, responsive. But eventually I felt friction at the backs of my feet. The yak leather did not, in fact, transfer moisture well. My sweaty heels chafed considerably.
After the blistering run, I peeled them off my ripped-up feet and returned to the store. “No, keep them,” said the owner. “They gifted us the pair.” And so the neon leather shoes would sit in the corners of numerous apartment closets, following me around the country like a cold sore from a one-night stand—too leathery for running, too neon for mixed company, too expensive for Goodwill.
Turns out that once you go yak, you can indeed go back.
Shoe #2: “Rigid, but ambitious partner looking for someone prepared for a bumpy ride.”
My fling with the BIOM was in the late 2000s, a moment when running-shoe brands had reached new heights of over-engineering.
Hoping to pad their profit margins, shoes were offering more expensive “high cushion” options. More overlays, more foamy cushion tech, more plastic components in the midsoles and uppers. Shoes became stiff, the foot bound with features to justify high price points.
The most notorious example of this feature bloat was the Asics Gel-Kinsei. A metallic catastrophe of plastic, the Kinsei promised customers the most gel cushioning that Asics could manage to shove into a shoe. They felt like running in ski boots and, as an added bonus, looked like the ejaculate of the T-1000.
My own high-cushion tryst was with Mizuno, a summer fling with the Wave Creation, which I brought with me for a few months of language study in France. The shoe featured an upgraded “wave plate,” a piece of flexing plastic was wedged in the midsole. A spring-like shock absorber sat under the heel. It was, given all the plastic, about as flexible as a tire iron.
Every afternoon, after several hours flailing through rudimentary French lessons, I’d decompress on the gravel paths I discovered outside Dijon—the crunchy gravel underfoot a familiar sensation in an otherwise foreign country.
There was just one problem. Little rocks from those pleasant farming paths were constantly getting stuck in the Wave Creation’s cavernous spring heel. Every couple miles, I’d hear a rattle at my feet before a sharp jab knifed into my heel. Merde!
I had thought I’d find some moody French gal in France. She’d enrapture me with existentialist philosophy expounded between sultry puffs of cigarette smoke. Instead I spent the trip with my Mizunos, jogging through dusty Burgundian farmlands, fishing little French stones out from my silly trampoline shoes.
Shoe #3: “Flashy And Bright—seeking someone who doesn't mind the occasional stumble”.
It wasn’t long before high-tech shoes were passé. As the minimalist craze caught fire, shoe brands retreated from zany cushioning schemes to the bare essentials of lace, fabric, and foam.
I wore many minimalist shoes—and have the stress fractures to prove it—but the pair I wore that stood out, literally, was from Puma, who used the minimalist moment to trumpet their biggest star: Usain Bolt.
After the 2012 Olympics, there was no greater track athlete than Bolt, who defended his 100m and 200m Olympic titles before anchoring the Jamaican 4 x 100m team to gold. The sprinter punctuated each win with his signature victory pose, his arm stretched back as if primed to shoot an arrow toward the heavens.
Puma, eager to take advantage of an athlete with almost universal global recognition, splashed Bolt’s pose all over their racing flat.
The Bolt pose was adhesed to the outer upper and tongue creating a style one might describe as “bowling shoe chic.” Usain’s golden profile shined grotesquely, jarringly against the all-back upper and midsole. To wear them was to look like a clown on an exercise break.
We’ve all been there. Those shoes you’re embarrassed to be seen in public with, and yet you can’t help yourself. Even worse, my pair ran slightly long. And one day, when crossing a street, I caught that extra bit of toe on the road, tripping into an extended roll across the pavement. I was not injured, but lay there for a moment, face-up, blocking traffic and staring up at the sky.
The sun glinted off Usain’s chest and arms. And as I rested my head briefly against the tarmac, I pondered how the shoes, a deceitful lover, had led me to this moment—a roll in the hay that led to my backside against the pavement.
Running shoes are not people. But they rest against and beneath you, cradling your feet and sharing the burden of your ambitions and your shortcomings: each step a cushioned embrace, each pair a unique story, transforming mundane paths into meaningful journeys.
Shodden through sunlit morning strolls and twilight shakeouts. Donned for races and rambles. Laced up for long runs and leisurely laps. That may be a relationship of utility, but it’s one built on trust and resilience. That may not be love, but it is something.
Tweets of the week
Parting thought
"One shoe can change your life.”
— Cinderella
"They felt like running in ski boots and, as an added bonus, looked like the ejaculate of the T-1000." = poetry
I'm slow to respond to this post, but not because I don't have love/hate relationships with my shoes... good, bad, or otherwise, I keep track of their mileage (and race resume), and I photograph each pair before I retire them. I just added pair #95 (the new Inov8 Mudtalon Speed - which by the way performed brilliantly in the WY high-country mud at Bighorn 100).