Retraction

Earlier this month I waxed enthusiastic about my new Brooks running shoes, but I have to retract my endorsement. Not that they aren't great shoes... I'm sure they are. And it's not like I was bought them sight unseen or anything; they were super comfy when I tried them on and did the quickie test run down the hall at the running store.

Unfortunately, as often happens with my #%^#$$ goofy shaped feet, the initial test was misleading. I took them for a couple of runs at the gym, and it quickly became apparent after less than 5 minutes of actual running that they weren't going to work. My feet were painfully numb with little shooting pains down the outside. I spent a good portion of my workout off the treadmill experimenting with various ways to tie my shoes to reduce the discomfort.

I was seriously debating just keeping them and living with my mistake; I mean, why should I punish the shoe store for selling me shoes that I said fit me? And I really didn't want to drive downtown with all the snow. But as luck would have it, my bike came back from being repaired just a few days before the shoe return deadline, so I decided the powers that be were telling me to return them while I picked up my bike.

I walked in with my shoes, the cool guy who helped me before remembered me asked what was wrong, I explained, and inside of 30 seconds he'd swapped them out for the other pair we'd debated over. He even knocked off the price difference (of course the new ones cost more) so it was an even trade. The bonus is that the new ones have pink trim instead of acid yellow.

With everything going on I haven't had a chance yet to go running in my new shoes, but I'm optimistic they'll work. Part of the reason I didn't get them before is that the sizing is so funky on that model (NB 1060) I wasn't sure what to make of it; I wear a 6EE, even have other New Balance shoes in that size, but these fit perfectly - even have some extra room in the toe box - at a 7 1/2 B.

Anyway, the morals of the story are that you can't trust shoe sizes, you can't always trust test runs for shoe fit, and the guys at Fleet Feet at awesome.