It's that time of year again: the time when the weather turns chilly and when my toes turn colors. I love going running with my friends, but that danged poor circulation in the metatarsal region of the body makes long runs problematic. Even if the rest of my body is sweating, a long cold-weather run often means my toes are white, yellow, purple, or all three by the time I get home and remove the socks, and then the toes ache and throb for a half-hour. Youwch.
The solution is not better socks, or thicker socks, or more socks. The solution, I'm sure from vast experimentation, involves a different kind of shoe, one that doesn't have mesh right across the toes. The problem is airflow, not lack of insulation. A shoe that has a solid upper, rather than [$@$#] mesh upper, makes such a wonderful, wonderful difference.
Alas, running shoes with solid uppers seem to be hard to find. I have a *great* pair, one that I bought for $1 at a yard sale back in 2009. The shoes are still useable -- in fact, this past September, I ran my half-marathon in them (whoop!). But, y'know, shoes that I got in 2009 might not last for another decade. Maybe not even for another winter, frankly. And those shoes have a great upper, but the lower has little traction, so they're not great when the snow arrives.
Hunting through the several so-called Thrift Shops in my town, I've found a few other shoes with solid uppers, but they tend to be twice as heavy as my regular running shoes, and when I'm going out for a 1-to-2 hour run, that tiny bit of extra weight makes a big difference.
So, here's this year's experiment: shoe patches. I have a pair of comfy trash-picked running shoes. They're serviceable, but not my favorites. Eh, the price for this pair was right, and I figured they'd be exactly the shoes to experiment on. Here, pictured below, is the experiment: shoe patches.
The result? The shoes are definitely less pretty than before, and that's saying something right there. But the real test is about airflow, and THAT result is much more agreeable: I've had a couple of long-ish cold-weather runs with them, and -- so far -- my toes have finished the runs pretty much the same color as when we all started together. I'm going to declare preliminary success, and continue the experiment.
If these shoe patches do the trick, I will probably try to uglify some other shoes I like a tad more, ones that are in a little bit better shape, and that would be happy to head out onto the run and meet other shoe friends who are thumping up and down the same hills with us.
