With Footwear, Try Then Adjust

A triathlete said after running a marathon: “My left instep is still quite bruised—it took a pounding from the stretchy triathlon shoelaces that I used and whoops!—never adjusted quite properly. Lesson learned: too loose is better than too snug.”
     In other words, she put the laces in her shoes and ran in them without adjusting them to fit her feet. This is an easily made and common mistake. When you make changes to our footwear, learn to try… and then adjust as necessary. You can apply this same failure to other parts of your footwear.
     Here are three “don’ts”:
1.  Wearing new shoes for a walk, race, or hike without trying them first—it’s easy to miss a bad fit, a rough inside seam or a wrong fitting arch. Walk around the house in them for a few hours.
2.   Wearing new socks in an event without first trying them inside your shoes—the socks may be thicker or thinner than your previous socks, making the fit different.
3.   Replacing insoles without checking if they are thinner or thicker than the old ones, which can change the space for your feet inside your shoes.