Fifty-Seven Dollars a Foot

Yesterday was day two on my brand new shoes.  This is noteworthy only because I have fifteen days to decide if these are the ones for me, and I fear that I’ve fallen in love.  Who doesn’t love love, right?  Well, me, when love ends up costing triple digits.

Considering I’ve developed an identity around being a runner so wholly that I’ve started a blog about it, you would think that I would be more discerning about the single most important piece of equipment a runner needs*.  But my last pair of shoes was from Costco, and like all the pairs before them, didn’t cost more than sixty bucks. 

 

After a year of commendable service, I found myself coveting the latest iteration of that same style.  These new shoes were bright and beautiful and nearly double what I paid for their ancestor.  I agonized.  The Never More Than Sixty Dollars principle was a steadfast rule of mine for thirteen years running (pun intended and apologized for) and I wasn’t keen to break it.  I went to a number of stores, tried on every pair of my brand on the discount racks.  Nothing felt right.  I flared my nostrils at the salesman who told me there’s a “real big difference” in comfort and quality between the fifty dollar price point versus the hundred dollar price point.  I rabidly scoured the internet looking for deals on this pair like a cheated-on girlfriend rabidly scouring her boyfriend’s text messages while he’s in the shower.  I made spreadsheets that included columns for shipping, promo codes, and my credit card special rewards, trying to whittle it down to under a Benjamin with no success.  After weeks of agonizing, and in part using the fifteen day guarantee as weak justification, I bought them for one hundred fourteen dollars.

My first run in the new pair was on what auspiciously turned out to be National Running Day (who knew that was a thing?).  It might have been the first time I actually hoped for a blister.  Eight miles later, I still haven’t found anything to complain about.  But I still haven’t thrown out my old pair yet, those sixty dollar workhorses from humble beginnings that served me so well.  I feel like the mean husband in The Good Earth who mistreated his first wife who bore him sons and lavished expensive gifts on his younger, prettier wife number two.  I might hang onto my old pair, even after the fifteen days expire.  Just to remember where I came from.

*Yes, I’m completely disregarding the “barefoot is best” argument.