Friday, December 14, 2007

New Shoes Make You Go Faster!

When I was a kid...17 and under...I never understood why my dad would get up each morning and run 3 miles...rain, sleet, snow or bitter cold. He would just bundle up and beat the street.

Those of you that know my dad know he is famous for an extremely bowed-out leg with no cartilage on the knee, an old caber-tossing injury he sustained while working on a goat milk dairy farm in the Scottish Hilands. After the medieval-type surgery he was left with a bone on bone arrangement that couldn't have been comfortable to run on...but he did it anyway.

Now that I am older and wiser I realize why he ran...much the same reason that Forrest Gump ran...because you escape when you run. Nothing else matters except the next step...it is refreshing and calming.

I run 3 miles a day 5 days a week, sometimes more. So I am your average "jogger". Oh yeah, the other reason I run, is because I eat like a pig. I was tying up my shoes the other day and noticed how broke down they were from running, and it dawned on me that I have been running in the same shoes for over a year and a half...so it was time to retire them to the lawn mowing pile of shoes.

On Wednesday I replaced my old Salomon XA Pro's with a new pair of Adidas Bounce's. I felt like an 8 year old with new kicks! I felt like I was floating on air and running so much faster. It was like running was new again.

I can't help but remember the time I got a pair of KangaROOs I felt like the coolest kid in the town and always had a couple of quarters in each hidden pocket, and I could jump in those 'ROOs.

New shoes haven't changed, they still make kids, and BIG kids, go faster and jump higher. Maxim has some black Chuck Taylor All-Stars that are completely rad, and his first comment was, "See how high I jump, dad?"

Little did he know both of his grandpas probably said the same thing about the same shoes about 50 years ago. Makes me wonder if my grand kids will be wearing KangaROOs?


By the way I was happy to see my name didn't make it on to the MLB's "The Mitchell Report". I once did a TV news story about baseball and steroids.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I grew up with someone who got a pair of "ice climbers" one time. In the same mode of "see how high I can now jump", he immediately learned they didn't really climb ice that well as he got a different view of them on his backside!!

Brent

Anonymous said...

keep running and you and your dad well look like twins walking down the street