throwing away a pair of running sneakers

i bought a new pair of running sneakers today. with a new pair of sneakers, i will be throwing away my old pair of sneakers.

you could choose to measure your life in days and hours, weeks and months.... or you could measure your life by the shoes you wear on your feet.

these shoes in particular were with me for a pretty good time frame of my life. a lot happened in these shoes.

these were the shoes when i first learned i grew into a size 14. it was a hard lesson. the pair before these running sneakers were my first ever real attempt at buying running sneakers so i could run properly (up until that point i had been running in vans). but those sneakers were 13.5 which i thought was my shoe size. i tried them on at the store and they seemed like they would work but i learned after a few runs that they wouldn't. i don't know how, but my feet grew a half inch and i needed to upgrade... and soon... i'll spare the details of what could possibly happen if you run in sneakers a half size too small... but it was pretty awful.

so i got rid of the 13.5's which never accomplished much except for a few runs. got my new size 14 nike's and i was a running fool. running never felt better. i felt inspired to run more often and farther and i found myself pushing my usual limits on running.

at one particular point last year, i quit drinking alcohol completely for 3 months. during this time, i pushed myself to run even more often and it was probably the most serious push i ever gave myself running. what was once a 3-4 times a week habit was now becoming a 5-6, sometimes even all 7 days of the week habit. i found myself running faster and farther. i started running 10k's at the lake by my place on weekends. i'd eventually push that further and start running 8 miles at least once a weekend. and that's kinda where i stand right now.

i played basketball in these sneakers. i know that doesn't seem like a big deal... but there's a part of me that misses playing games outside. it's good recreation and something i'd like to do more often. and though i'm not all that skilled at basketball, i still had a lot of fun playing it. hopefully when the weather warms up, i'll find myself out there again... just with different shoes on my feet.

maybe more importantly than anything else, this pair of sneakers will be the first that i beat the life out of due to running. it'll be the first of what is hopefully many pairs of running sneakers that i run through. ending the era that is these sneakers is a badge of honor to me.... i'm proud that i ran these sneakers to a point where it's no longer acceptable to me to wear them.

these sneakers that i'm about to throw away are the first of many casualties in my pursuit to keep running.