For a very long time, I was convinced that my feet were those of a circus clown; long, flat and, as a UCONN student once shouted at me from his truck in the Borders parking lot in the summer of 2004, “floppy as f***”. Turns out I was wrong – well, mostly wrong – but it would take over a decade to figure out both the shape of my feet and the right size/shape of shoes to slip my “clown feet” into. for continued success on and off the Track.
My feet, for lack of a better word, are completely normal. You wouldn’t believe it, but apparently a lot of teenage boys — and even grown men — tend to worry about physical features that are actually perfectly adequate. It wasn’t until I started running that I started paying attention to my feet and preemptively buying the kind of shoes that could support my slight arch and thick heel during movement. Running in a pair of expert-approved running shoes made a world of difference from the oversized Converse I forced myself to put on so I could be considered “accessible punk” to the outside world.
Carson Caprara is vice president of footwear product management and merchandising at Brooks Running, and he pointed me in the direction of the brand’s Run Keeper platform; an easy-to-use quiz that asks you questions about how you run as well as how your feet, knees, legs and joints respond to various stimuli. From basic questions asking where you prefer to run (trail or gym) to goals, past injuries, and the direction your feet turn when you walk (i.e. feet pointing outward indicate that your weight is not evenly distributed on your foot), this intuitive set of questions – with the help of Carson – helped me understand how I run and what kind of shoes I should wear to maximize my comfort and reduce injuries.
“So there are two types of questions,” Carson begins. “Biomechanical questions, and more preference-type questions. Biomechanical questions are all about understanding… injury history, because that’s one of the biggest indicators for us that you might be using a shoe with better support, and we also look at whether you’re increasing or increasing your run . That’s why we ask about distance and mileage.
I talk to Carson about my feet, my stride, my goals and my running habits. I really am the proverbial perfect intermediate runner: I run about 10 miles a week and usually stick to flat trails or light inclines. When I asked Carson about my flat feet, he helped me understand how flat – really flat – feet impact both the fit of your shoe and running.
“Really flat feet are difficult for a lot of shoes because most shoes are designed with a traditional foot shape in mind,” Carson adds, “so if your foot is pretty flat and straight, often that foot can overhang the arch of a shoe and collapsing the midsection of the shoe because there is nothing to support that surface that naturally exists in the foot Brooks’ Run Keeper quiz led me straight to their beloved Ghost 14; a cushioned running shoe with a soft feel and reliable fit for road running and soft landings (my favorite kind)!
But what I remembered most from the conversation was not so much the shoes as the person wearing the said shoe: that is, me. For newcomers to running (I started in 2018 after reading What I’m talking about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami), there’s this idea that every run has to hurt you. It turns out that pushing yourself too hard during a run is, in some cases, much worse than running in the wrong shoes.
“A lot of the conventional wisdom that goes into running is that every run has to hurt or you have to get knocked down at the end…and that’s not sustainable for anyone,” adds Carson. “No one would race if it was like that every race. One or two of these races a week is fine; it will push you physically but just like weight lifting or any other exercise you need to recover and one of the biggest benefits of running is that you get a lot more out of running easy and slow physiologically than running fast . I know it’s crazy for people. For beginners or even moderate runners, pushing yourself to complete a brutal, hilly 10k every day is a surefire way to injure your knee or tear your ACL, and it may not help you become a better runner. long term race.
What I’m talking about when I talk about running: a memoir
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“The development of the aerobic system, the body’s ability to transfer oxygen from intake into your muscles, requires the expansion of capillaries and blood vessels in the muscles. And often that doesn’t happen when you’re running fast because oxygen doesn’t have as much time to get through the body. So it stays a little higher, more on the surface, and you don’t develop the capillaries and all those incredible oxygenated vehicles that can go through the whole body.
Too many millennials like me have applied this pre-Covid “bustle culture” to running; a mindset that inspires us to believe that working harder is working smarter. Bad. Your knees and joints don’t care about the positive comments you receive from your friends after posting screenshots of your 5 mile run on Instagram. You can go from the couch to 5K in a day, but the injuries you may sustain while training can prevent you from reaching your true potential as a runner. For me, I brought back from Brooks more than a pair of super-cushioned Ghost 14 sneakers; I’ve learned that running at your own pace is more than just going up and down until you’re nauseous.
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