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We stood wide-eyed in front of an ocean of running shoes lined up on the shelves before us. Red ones, blue ones, stability this, stability that, Nimbus, Glide, Wave, Precision; they all sounded very fast. The choices were overwhelming. As my wife and I roamed the isles at our local shoe superstore we quickly became disoriented by the volume of choices and the task before us. We had never purchased running shoes and to our novice eye they all looked pretty much the same. Naturally we gravitate towards those we thought looked cool. I didn't know much about it at the time, but even back then I was pretty sure that a selection criteria based mostly on which company carried your favorite colors probably wasn't the correct way to pick running shoes. I laughed at myself realizing that in all my years I had never purchased a pair of running shoes with the intent of actually running in them. This was truly a new experience. Drunk on the smell of chemicals and rubber, we staggered up and down rows of shoes. It was at that point I started wondering if it was possible we simply weren't smart enough to be runners. In a moment of panic I worried if we weren't bright enough to get past the 'buy a pair of shoes' stage, we surely will have problems with buying shorts, shirts or maybe even finding our way home after our first run! Should we be lo-jacked just in case? And what about those gadgets I see runners wearing in my neighborhood? What is that strap around their chest? Why are they wearing gigantic watches? This is not what I had signed up for. I tried to snap out of it. What am I thinking? This can't be that complicated. Putting fears aside, we pressed on looking for our first ever pair of running shoes. This whole thing started when, in a moment of weakness driven by the excitement of being fans for friends and family during the Disney Marathon, my wife and I signed up for the following year's Disney half-marathon. At the time it all seemed easy enough. Find some shoes, dig out an old pair of shorts, run a few times a week and show up on race day. Easy enough we thought. However, I began to worry that if the shoe selection process was any indication of how badly I had misjudged this running thing then things were likely to get much worse. Back in the store we eventually found shoes that meet our budgets and our fashion guidelines. Mine, a handsome pair of stability control Asics with blue piping on a white mesh body. Her choice was a pretty pair of Asics with pink on white with a hint of grey on the trim. Even though I had never run a mile in my life, standing in the store in my new running shoes made me feel like a real runner. I felt my chest grow and my spine straighten the moment I tied the second knot. After all, I was now a runner. Well technically I was not yet a runner, but I did own a cool pair of running shoes and that was a start. Three a.m. and the alarm clock beeped, it was time to run my first half-marathon. That might sound like a pretty early wake up call for a race that begins at 6am, but getting to the start line, like most things in the Disney, is a real production. At 3:45, the bus pulled away from the resort heading to the parking lot at Epcot. I felt the first real surge of excitement in my belly thinking that within a couple of hours I would be headed off on my first race and I would then officially be a runner. Outfitted with my handsome Asic running shoes, I was eager to join the other 30,000 sleep deprived fools who had made the trek to Orlando for the race. The marathon and half marathon ended several hours later with the usual fanfare that surrounds a race of this size. Lots of runners in Disney garb, folks running for various charities, and age groupers like me just hoping to finish on their feet. The Disney marathon weekend is definitely a real spectacle. I finished with a respectable time for a forty something, rookie half-marathoner and was pretty proud of myself. However, before you could say ibuprofen I was back at the hotel in bed and in a lot of pain. I was in bed for hours shivering under several layers of blankets with incredible knee pain. I remember laying in bed thinking "so this is why runners walk funny after races". Being my first race, I figured that running just hurt and I vowed never to do it again. What I didn't realize until later is that the pain I experienced isn't normal. Sure your leg muscles are likely to be tight and your knees will probably be a little stiff after a good, long, run, but pain at these levels was certainly not what runners should expect. My epiphany came months later and purely by accident. With the pain gone from both knees and memory, I convinced myself to run another race. A trip to the local shoe superstore seemed to be in order. As before, I applied my scientific shoe selection formula which was to pick the coolest colors and a shoe that looked fast. Standing in front of thirty different models of shoes, a pair of Asics Nimbus caught my eye. They met all the important criteria. Were they colorful? Absolutely; I could hardly be missed wearing orange, silver and black shoes. Did they look fast? I thought the silver trim made me look like lightening. Did they have my size? Check. Were they on sale? Yup - Sold. The next day after a run in my new, orange shoes I noticed something very strange. Nothing on my body hurt. No hip pain, no foot pain and most astonishing to me at the time, no knee pain. I was baffled. Was it possible to run without pain? I wondered could my old shoes be so worn out that these new shoes made that big of a difference? For those of you who know running shoes, you've probably already figure it out. My mistake, among other things, was to think that running shoes were running shoes. I had been warned to get fitted at a running store, run on a treadmill and let them evaluate me; let them inspect my arch height, and so on. This all sounded more like a doctor's visit than a shopping excursion so I opted to go on my own. Besides ignoring the advice of those who knew better, my specific mistake was I had purchased a stability running shoe when I was very much a neutral runner. This misfit shoe put enormous stress on the outside of my knees as it attempted to stabilize what was actually a pretty good natural running stride . Ironically, the same poor decision-making effort that lead me to the wrong shoe on my initial mega-store trip eventually lead me back to the correct shoe. By purchasing the Asic Nimbus I had, purely by chance, found the correct type of shoe for my running.
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