We’ve all forgotten things for a race or an event – cycling shoes, jacket, gloves, sunglasses, iPod, or a water bottle. Over the years, I’ve developed a mental checklist of those things and now I have Bev to help me remember things that I sometimes forget going out the door.
I’ve forgotten gloves, water, even cycling shoes. Now I add shoe inserts to the list. Yes, those thin, flimsy things that some abused Chinese laborer shoves into your running shoes to cover up all of the glue and the seams on the inside of the shoe.
Shoe inserts are something you don’t consider until you don’t have them. You never even think about those paper thin pieces until you run without them, your feet feeling like they’re getting a sandpaper pedicure with no arch support.
So, we’re at the staging area for the Coyote Hills Trail Race, 40 minutes from home, organizing our gear before we catch the shuttle bus to the start. I slip on my new trail shoes and my feet say “um, hello, dumbass – something’s missing down here”. Aaaaagggghhhhh! We consider skipping the run and returning home. I decide to suck it up, figuring that I can always turn around and walk back to the start line if it’s too terrible.
Oh, and did I mention that we were both registered for a half-marathon? 13.1 miles of my feet slapping the ground with flat, unsupported, freakishly thin soles on my new trail running shoes. Fortunately, it turns out that my adventurous spirit can still be tamed by rational thought, so I swapped my registration to the 5K route. My better half was nice enough to run the 10K so that I wouldn’t have to wait around for her at the finish.
So I ran 3.1 miles in shoes with no inserts and no orthotics (which is why I’d taken out the darn things in the first place). I flew through the course, passing people right and left, and when I got to the finish I noticed that there were only a handful of runners there. Go figure. I smoked those few miles in my funky, insert-less shoes. And now I’ve added “shoes AND inserts” to my run prep checklist.
