Step by step: Time to do a little bit of sole-searching

Since when did buying a new pair of running shoes become so complicated?

Sole mates: ‘I’m not just buying a running shoe, apparently, I’m buying a set of car tyres.’ Photograph: Getty Images

Tue Jun 16 2015 - 12:00

I bought a new pair of running shoes at the weekend.

This may not sound like a significant moment in my fitness drive, but it most definitely was. I bought the last ones in 2004 and they survived in near-mint condition due to being used so rarely.

The deal I made with myself last March was that I wouldn’t treat myself to a new pair until I’d proved that my latest commitment to improving my health and fitness was more than just an old notion wheeled out briefly before being put back into the attic where many other broken promises reside.

Now that I’m down a stone and a half, on Sunday I felt confident enough to enter a specialised running shop.

Off the couch

The experience is not a good one, mainly because I apparently thought the shop would have just the one pair of shoes, and I would stroll back out a few minutes later with a new enthusiasm for getting off the couch.

Instead, I’m immediately lost and intimidated by the endless rows of running shoes.

So I adopt a browsing pose, purposefully taking runners off a shelf and comparing them intelligently, without a clue what I’m looking at, apart from colour.

Eventually, an assistant approaches and I intelligently tell him I’m looking for “a runner . . . for running”.

“For you?”

I consider taking offence, but decide it isn’t a comment on my non-running-like frame and just agree.

Gently, the assistant points to the other side of the store. That’s where the running shoes for men hang out. It’s a bad start.

“Road, track, trail?” asks another assistant, before intently studying my boots, and asking – presumably to herself – “high arch, low arch, flat?”

“Runners . . . for running,” I reply.

I’m shepherded on to a treadmill. Really. Since when do we have to show we’re worthy of buying runners?

After I reluctantly step on to it, an assistant tells me I need to take off my shoes, and to put down my shopping bags.

I resolve that it may be only 30 seconds on a treadmill, but this counts. Workout done.

“You’re an over-pronator.”

“I also have trouble pronouncing ‘th’,” I reply.

No reaction. This is definitely not going well.

She explains, with a straight face, that I put more weight than I should on the inside edge of the shoe. I feel like apologising, but she quickly adds – in case I take the opportunity to say something stupid – that I need running shoes that offer “stability”.

Don’t they all? I’m told not knowing this meant I was an injury waiting to happen. What did we do before multi-billion shoe companies came to the rescue of those of us walking around oblivious to our seriously flawed feet?

I wonder how long I could expect to get out of runners like these.

“Up to 500 miles,” I’m told by the first assistant, who tells me he’s on his third pair since last November.

I decide not to boast about my 11-year-old runners waiting patiently at home. I also resist telling the joke about an American farmer who boasted to an Irish farmer that it took him a full day to drive around his farm. “Oh, I had a car like that once,” replies the Irish farmer.

Lift your sole

The assistant tells me I’m not buying just a running shoe. “This is part of your body when you’re running, and the way you run is decided by what type of shoes you wear.

“It’s like the tyres on a car,” she adds, and while I wonder does she say that to everyone, or just those who remind her of car tyres, she turns them over. “They also lift your sole.”

“I’ll take them so, my soul could do with a lift,” I reply.

Still nothing.

At the checkout, I decide not to dazzle the third assistant with my insights.

Leaving, I resolve to need another pair before the year is out.

But maybe from a different shop.