my feet are too big

Hi all,

Hope everyone has enjoyed their week so far. I'll be back next Tuesday with a short post. In the meantime, gotta run, so please enjoy the post. Have a nice weekend, everyone.

Tim

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At the end of May, I finished reading Cheryl Strayed's Wild, her bestselling memoir about her hike along the Pacific Coast Trail. One thing she writes about is her footwear. At some point along the way, she concludes (with a little help from a more experienced hiker) that her boots are simply too small and she must replace them with a larger pair.

The specific passage that made me think about my own feet was a description of her mangled toenails, discolored and falling away one at a time as foot met too-small boot over and over on her daily hikes. I really had no choice but to think about this because the description could have applied to my feet. So when her new boots arrive and she describes how much easier it is to complete her daily hiking requirements, I took almost immediate notice.

Until I read Wild, it never really occurred to me that my size twelve running shoes were possibly too tight. But once I started thinking, it became clear that this was the only logical conclusion. I noticed a week later, for example, that the shoes I got when I went bowling never came close to fitting at size twelve (1). The same experience was repeated a week later when I found a size twelve tuxedo shoe a tad snug.

It seems I needed a gentle nudge to acknowledge that I was torturing my own feet for no reason over the past couple of years. The most obvious outward sign that I ignored were toenails that would consistently discolor or fall off whenever I went through an extended period of sustained running (2). I also experienced a pinching sensation between two of my smaller toes on the left foot for quite some time that recently graduated from 'occasional' to 'standard daily fact'.

Like anyone fully immersed in reality denying mode, I skillfully found ways both private and public to cope with my discomfort and explain (to myself or to others) any unusual behavior. I removed my shoes often, particularly at work, and laced them very loosely when I went running. I reduced my general walking speed to a near crawl, explaining to wisecrackers that 'I guess I just walk slow' (3). Instead of researching causes for the pinching discomfort, I attributed it to a combination of general overuse and the lingering aftermath of my hip injury from 2012.

Good thing I read Wild. The experience of acknowledging all these little problems led me to buy a size thirteen running shoe about five weeks ago (4). And the results so far are very encouraging- my running distance is increasing into the forty-two to forty-five mile a week range, I have very little discomfort in the final miles of each run, and have almost no difficulty to get going at the start of the next run. All three of these metrics are major improvements on the same measurements made two months ago.

My feet feel a little better, in general. If they are going to fully heal, I expect it to take some time. I was restricting my soles for several years, after all (or a couple thousand miles, I suppose, if you prefer to look at it by mileage). It will take time for my feet to expand back out properly if it is ever to happen at all. But over the past five weeks, the pinching sensation is greatly reduced and some of the soreness in other parts of my legs is going away, as well. I'm optimistic.

I guess the question that remains for me is to figure out what really happened and whether there is anything important to draw from it. Is there a big lesson to take away from buying a running shoe?

My feeling in general about this experience is a mixture of embarrassment and astonishment. I generally rant and rave about looking for self-improvement projects so taking several years to figure out that what I put on my feet every single day do not fit is not something I am proud to include on my self improvement project history.

From my experience, it is a universal thing to wait and delay and stall when a change obviously needs to be made. It is such a human thing to resist change. To change is to dishonor the decisions made by our past selves, a past self that we feel for and identify with and want to stay in touch with, after all.

But in general, I think I do well when I need to make a change. In this example, once I knew the change was required, I just went online and bought the shoes. So I suspect this experience is more a reflection on how I choose to acknowledge the need for a change.

A possibility to consider is my own reluctance to see that I could run better than I was doing with size twelves. Why change what is resulting in maximum performance?

About a year or so ago, I started tracking my own distance as a way to measure running performance. My loosely defined goal was to add a mile or so every two or three weeks to my weekly total. I also wanted to steadily increase my longest run, again about once every two or three weeks. At the time, these two numbers were about thirty miles a week and five and a half miles, respectively.

I kept on that track through the winter and into early spring. But I did hit a plateau of sorts when I struggled to get past forty miles a week in the spring. Plus, I always seemed to fade in the last portion of a ten mile run. And although I did note the discomfort I described above during these weeks of running, I also considered that I ran more than almost all people and maybe I was just hitting my natural limit.

I think this line of thinking was the big mistake. There are times where comparing yourself to others is very helpful. But when it comes to activities where you are trying to get the best out of yourself, such a mentality is only going to hold you back. The easiest way to sell yourself short is to point at someone else who does it a little better. If you are trying to improve at something and looking for help and someone stops by to insist that you are fine just the way you are, you should a) ignore them or b) marry them (I do not see a productive middle ground here) (5).

I was never going to acknowledge the issue with sneaker size until I believed that my running could improve. This was a remarkably difficult conclusion to arrive at because, at that time, I was running better than I ever had before. The leap in logic required to make a big change is difficult enough when everything goes wrong. It is many times harder to make changes when things are going well. Why stop doing something that is going well?

I guess in my case, I was fortunate that enough went wrong to force my acknowledgement of a problem. Recognizing that the sneakers might be a problem eventually gave me a chance to run better. At this point, the size thirteen fit is good, perhaps perfect, but at least better than before. And I feel better prepared to continue scrutinizing my own process in the future to continue to improve as a runner.

So, the big lesson here, even for non-runners? I learned that my own feet are never too big or too small. Those feet are my feet. My job is to find the best fit for them to work naturally, not to find the best shoe to fit them unnaturally into.

I can do all kinds of things- like tinker and stretch and justify and compromise and grit my teeth- to make ill-fitting shoes more comfortable and get on with things really well on a day to day basis. But if I get that initial fit wrong, there won't be much I can do later to change the fact that the shoe doesn't fit.

Footnotes...

1. Bowling tangent... 

I never bowl but for some reason right around that time it seemed that everyone I knew suddenly wanted to go BOWLING. I went BOWLING about five times in two weeks. No idea why. I went often enough to where my hand started to hurt. And, just as quickly, the mania stopped. I haven't gone in the six weeks since (*).

It reminds me of freshman year at college when it appeared that everyone suddenly discovered how much fun FRISBEE was without providing any explanation to me.

The bowling shoes not fitting so well is a little odd. My tentative conclusion on shoes is that the more powerful the movement, the tighter the fit should be. Bowling requires acceleration that leads to a hard step so at least one of the shoes should fit snugly. So my expectation was that bowling shoes, like basketball sneakers, would fall into my size twelve range.

I still play basketball once a week and I intend to keep myself at size twelve. The running volume involved is not significant enough to cause permanent harm and the risk of ankle spraining is much higher if the sneaker is loose. I'm still undecided on the footwear I walk around in. The safest bet at this moment is to assume that if I see a size twelve and a half that looks good, I'll probably try it out.

2. 'An extended period of sustained running'...
I actually laughed aloud when I typed that- it reads as if this happens every once in a while. My current 'extended period' is in month fifteen.

And by the way, it was not all bad with those toenails. One of them cracked 'beautifully' at the start of June- it looked like a perfect sunset in reverse- dark up top and gradually becoming lighter until a stripe of pink-red comes in where the skin starts. Made it hard to walk around properly for a week or so, though.

3. You do learn from your DIY solutions...
Not everything about having foot pain is negative. I did learn that walking slower is preferred to walking fast. It is a good example of something clever I read a little while ago- that what is unenjoyable might improve if it were tried a little slower.

So if you see me strolling about today, no, my foot does not really hurt, I'm just walking at what I consider the ideal pace. And if you are not enjoying something that you suspect you should be enjoying, slow down a tiny bit and go from there.

4. Shoes shoes shoes...
The size thirteens I bought were the same brand as my size twelves. You should make changes when needed but nothing too drastic, you know? One change at a time.

5. Tim is giving marriage advice??!?

It sure seems that way! Let's keep in mind that I only dispense the best advice at all times, of course.

And if you do choose to marry them, make sure first that they will encourage your attempts to improve, anyway.

Thus concludes the only marriage advice you may ever get on this blog.