My Search for Marathon Shoes

by Jon Waldron

The young woman helping me is very nice. If she harbors any resentment about the pile of shoe boxes next to me–seven and growing–she doesn’t show it. Eventually, I will buy one of them. It will not end my search.

She doesn’t know that this choice of shoes embodies a decade and a half of trying to find the right balance between aggressive and conservative approaches to the marathon and its trappings. In 16 years and nine marathons, I haven’t yet found the right pair of shoes for the job. Running shoes are such an individual choice, and the stress and strain of the marathon amplify any imperfection into a major issue. I agonize and strategize ways of overcoming this issue–in vain, it seems.

It took me another seven years to screw up the courage to try the marathon again, and I was ultra-conservative in my choice of footwear. I wanted to run Boston, and I needed a qualifying time, not a PR, so I the Hyannis Marathon in my refular heavy training shoes. I not only qualified but had remarkably little soreness despite the absence of any training run longer than 18 miles leading up to the race. At Boston, I went with training shoes again (a different pair) and ran a steady, uneventful race, again with relatively few problems afterwards.

Now, it’s entirely possible that I was having “good” races because I had learned not to go out quite so fast, to hydrate properly, etc. But the choice of shoes somehow had become symbolic of the choice of strategies for the race–a choice of weapons, as it were. When I charged into the race full of competitive fire and outfitted in lightweight racing flats, I suffered more and raced below my expectations. When I approached the race meekly, with respect and caution, I seemed to survive better. But the one thing that was missing from the equation was improvement. In four marathons I hadn’t improved at all. This was extremely frustrating.

In my very first marathon, I bought a pair of Tigers recommended by a staffer at the Bill Rodgers Running Store. These shoes were feather light, in the style of the times. The race went reasonably well, but the shoes seemed to give out on me in the last six miles, and I remember feeling the texture of the pavement under my feet and my bones rattling. I didn’t learn my lesson then, and marathon number two was raced in a pair of 6.5 oz. Nikes that I still keep around as a reminder of my appallingly poor judgement. My quads still remember that race.

Marathon number five was very important to me. It was at the end of 1991 and I had friends who were trying to get qualifying times for the Olympic Trials. I trained as though I, too, had a shot at running a 2:20 marathon, although my best was fifteen minutes slower. I trained harder than I ever had, harder than I ever have since. Realistically, I thought I had a chance to run 2:25. There was no doubt in my mind that I needed to have fast shoes.

Once again I faced the dilemma of how much shoe to clamp onto my feet. I knew that I would pick up and put down every the weight of each shoe 25,000-30,000 times in the course of the race. I didn’t want extra weight if I didn’t need it. But what did I need? Once again, I went with lightweight racing flats. This time my shoes didn’t fail me. They were fine. Unfortunately, the last third of the race was run into a 20-mph headwind and I faded from a 2:26 pace to a 2:30 in the final few miles, a PR by over five minutes.

In the almost ten years since then, I’ve run four more marathons, always facing the same shoe dilemma–lightweight for speed or heavier for support. I’ve come to believe that the lightest shoe is not necessarily the fastest shoe, although I have no evidence to prove it. I believe that the shoe that fatigues your muscles the least is ultimately the best shoe, but I have not figured out how to reliably tell which pair of shoes will score highest on this very personal test without actually running significant races in them. A Catch-22 which has me stumped.

Walking to my car with my new shoes in a box under my arm, I wonder whether I’ve made the right choice this time. I’m sure the answer will come to me just about the time I turn onto Boylston Street and allow myself to think about how good it will feel to stop.

posted by admin in Stories on July 9, 1999

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