The runner’s knot is a godsend.
The runner’s knot is a godsend.
Sometime in the last couple years I remember reading a piece by Aaron Burch about cracking eggs and skateboard tricks. The writing wasn’t published where I thought it was, so I could be misremembering here, but what I remember is Aaron writing about how doing something well requires repetition, specifically taking joy in small, idiosyncrasies that eventually can be honed into a process. The word craft is probably on the horizon (like a proverbial ark in a time of teenage ennui).
I bought a pair of pink Saucony Endorphin Pro 3s. I wanted to go faster. I fell out of love with running sometime in my 20s and that lasted through much of my 30s, but even when I didn’t love running, I couldn’t help running. But I never ran consistently until Covid hit and the pandemic paused my commute. This was common, I think. (Remember everyone bought bikes, like all the bikes were sold out.) Well, after honing the habit into something resembling a process, I wanted to shave off seconds or even minutes from my race times. Hence, the shoes.
And the shoes worked. I ran a personal best in an October 10k. Then I ran a personal best in an October half marathon. Then I dropped over two minutes from that time on my next half marathon effort in November. The process and the shoes were paying dividends. Somewhere in there I ran my fastest 5k since high school and then I ran in a Turkey Trot. And the pink shoes didn’t work.
The time was respectable, but the entire 3.1 miles I felt a metal peg in my left heel. I ran another half marathon and another 5k in December, and both were marked by that bone-bruising sensation, which also started to haunt the runs when I didn’t wear the pink shoes. What I didn’t understand was how these shoes that didn’t even have a hundred miles on them were tearing up my feet. They couldn’t be dead yet. But they felt dead. I googled the issue. Nothing. No one else had this issue with the Endorphins Pro 3s, although some people made minor complaints about rubbing on the Achilles heel. Then I stumbled upon a how-to video for tying a runner’s knot.
I’ve been tying my shoes for a while now. Tying shoes is about holding things in place. I started tying shoes before 2007. Before 9/11. Before the 21st Century. Before Columbine. Before Jordan’s second retirement. Before heartbreak. Before moving. Before Jordan’s first retirement. Before the ’96 Summer Olympics or the Atlanta Braves World Series win in ‘95. Before the siege in Waco or the World Trade Center Bombing. Before Pearl Jam’s Ten or Nirvana’s Nevermind. Before kindergarten. It’s been a while is all I’m saying. I wasn’t married. I could maybe ride a bike. And until recently I definitely did not think I had anything new to learn about tying shoes. But this past weekend I wore those painful pink shoes and at the start of the run I tied a runner’s knot.
After doing so, the heel pain I had been experiencing felt residual. That metal railroad spike was gone. The runner’s knot works like a harness. I think my left foot had been sliding forward in the shoe and so the shoe’s metal plate was striking it awkwardly. The knot worked so well on the left shoe that I stopped about a half mile into the run to tie a runner’s knot on the right shoe as well (doing so seems to have relieved the hurt brought on by a bout with peroneal tendinitis).
The runner’s knot stabilizes the heel by adding an extra row of laces across the top of the foot at the base of the ankle. That unused hole in the top of the shoe’s upper is designed for this (every running shoe has one), and my expert advice: Google how to tie a runner’s knot. Then try it. It made my shoes feel brand new again. It became a small part of a joyful process.
And it made me think about this paragraph in Aaron Burch’s essay instead of the pain reverberating from the ground up and through the bones and ligaments that make up the human body:
You do something enough, you get better at it, sometimes it even becomes second nature. You don’t have to think about it at all. I’m convinced I could ollie right now, if I tried, though it’s also been long enough, and I’m old enough, that I’m not actually going to try. Because I don’t want to hurt myself, and also I don’t want to learn that that assumption isn’t true. I hope that girl-by-the-side-of-the-church figures it out, if she hasn’t already. I hope she realizes the joy and beauty and exaltation of ollieing over something or up onto a curb without even having to think about it. I hope she finds it as satisfying as I did.
And we’re never too young — or old — to feel joy.
