As I placed my old running shoes next to my new pair on the counter at Designer Shoe Warehouse, the young lady ringing me up smiled and asked, “Would you like to donate these?”
I stared at her for a second, mostly because these shoes could only have value to me, or so I thought.
“These have holes on the top. I don’t think these would do anybody any good,” I said.
“You can still donate them,” she said politely.
“You know, I know this doesn’t make sense, but I can’t donate these,” I said. “They have special meaning to me.”
I’ve never been a hoarder. I don’t collect much beyond a small collection of baseball cards from my childhood, about 15 baseball caps and a handful of items commemorating the late Yordano Ventura and 2015 Kansas City Royals.
For months, various people have told me it was time for new shoes. The pair I’d been working out in for a long time were the equivalent of a 125-year-old shack. There are a couple of small holes in the top, a few more on the sides and the bottoms are so worn that I was getting blisters after a rare run.
My feet hurt enough after a four-mile run Thursday that I knew it was time to let go. Or at least buy a new pair and not look like I’m homeless at the gym.
As I was leaving for Kansas City on Sunday to pick up my stepson from work, I brought my shoes into the living room and asked my wife is she knew why I’d kept using them for so long.
“Because they’re your first pair of running shoes?” She said. (Apparently my wife thinks I hold on to things for too long.)
“No,” I replied. “I’ve kept these because these are the shoes I was working out with when I got Epstein-Barr.”
It’s been about three years since that nasty virus kicked my ass for more than a year. I’ve written about that several times now. Suffice to say, it was a miserable experience.
After running for five years, including several 40-mile weeks and a 1,500-mile year, I’d transformed my 320-pound body into calorie-torching furnace. I was going through three or four pair of running shoes every year at one point.
Right about the time I bought my last pair of running shoes, I’d been working out twice a day to the tune of 2.5 hours and more than 1,300 calories. I noticed in these new shoes that I was beginning to get tired, enough so that I couldn’t run the seven or eight miles at a time that I had been.
By the middle of 2015, my body was fried after three or four miles. Finally, in April 2016, it had had enough, shutting down in the form of EBV. Overnight, I went from ridiculous regiment to no regiment.
For more than a year, I didn’t work out. No lifting. No running. No elliptical. My shoes sat on a hope chest on top of my running shorts and shirt, which I set out every night hoping I’d have the energy to work out the next morning.
That day didn’t come until November 2017 when I started lifting weights and doing light cardio again. After 18 months, the shorts, shirt and shoes on the hope chest weren’t collecting dust.
Even though the shoes were well past their prime, I kept wearing them to the gym. I realized people probably saw them and wondered if a hobo sneaked into fitness loft. I also knew they didn’t know what I saw in them.
Every time I felt myself getting tired, I’d look down at my shoes. It was a constant reminder of what pushing your body too far can do. And ever time I looked down in those moments, I knew it was time to stop.
I also knew it was time to stop using them when my battered feet said “Enough is enough” on Thursday.
Three days later, after trying on dozens of pairs of shoes (I’m the guy who might try on one pair of pants before buying three to get it over with), I settled on my first new pair in more than four years. Different color, same brand, same feel.
After battling and fearing EBV for three years, I figured it was time for new kicks.