My new running shoes are gray with Ns outlined in blue reflective stitching. I put them on for the first time this morning and felt fast. I ran down to the river to watch the early morning mist steaming off the water.

I have never bought a pair of shoes just for running before. For the last year, since I reluctantly took up running, I have been running in an old pair of New Balance cross trainers outfitted with orthotic inserts. They were prescribed for me by my podiatrist many years ago when I was diagnosed with chronic plantar fasciitis. He had assumed I was a runner when he handed me two prescription slips, one for naproxen and another for the shoes. He also told me to throw out the Doc Marten�s� [how�s that for an apostrophic nightmare?] that I�d worn into his office. �They are the worst shoes for your feet.� I was crushed.

I used to have a girlie shoe fetish and a large collection to support my emotional needs. But after I returned from the foot doctor, the collection got a lot smaller. I have very little that can be termed impractical now, and it is soul crushing to think about. Out went my three pairs of Doc Marten�s, including my prized oxfords with the square toes that I�d bought in Dublin. Out went the overlaced black suede pumps with the Louis heels and the green suede Mary Jane flats from a decadent afternoon spent on 8th St. in Greenwich Village. I retained my Birkenstock Jesus sandals and replaced the rest with a pair of practical black clogs, which I wore nearly every day. The cross-trainers stayed in the box, mostly.

I�ve had problems with plantar fasciitis and shin splints on and off since I graduated from college and began an aggressive commuting regimen on urban terrains. I�m a fast and determined walker and I walked everywhere: first from my West Philly apartment to my office in downtown Philly, later from my Davis Square apartment to my Harvard Square office and across the south side of Chicago. Sometimes it was because I lacked a car, but mostly it was because I preferred to walk. When I worked in Chicago�s Loop, I�d often choose to walk home through the weird pseudo-industrial district to my Ukrainian Village apartment some five miles away.

Through all this city walking, I�d refused to do one thing: wear sneakers with my work clothes. I�m not sure why I�m so incredibly against this. I can certainly see the practicality in it and I don�t usually let fashion dictate my comfort to such a degree � I wear clogs almost every day, for God�s sake. The only thing I can think of is a very clear picture I have from my first solo trip to Washington D.C. It was my freshman year in college and I was participating in a Model U.N. conference at Georgetown I was staying with a friend on the other side of the river from the conference hotel. As I walked across the bridge in the morning, I was overwhelmed by the sea of women dressed identically in giant-shouldered navy blue suits with floppy bow ties (this was the late 80s � think Meg Ryan on the plane in When Harry Met Sally), dark hose, and white sneakers. The stunning level of homogeneity at that moment somehow gave the sneakers a totemic meaning � loss of personality. And I would have none of it.

When I took up running, as part of a campaign last year to lose weight and improve my health, I did not wish to look like a runner. I didn�t really know what I was doing and I had no endurance. I didn�t want to be dressed in running clothes while I was walking � it made me feel like a failure. My hitherto virtually unused cross-trainers served me well, through a long fall and winter of plodding through forest preserves and down the winding roads of my neighborhood.

Something has changed, though. Last year, when I began after the pool closed, I could run about a block before stopping to walk. I alternated short stints of running and walking until I�d put enough distance behind me. I stopped running around March, when I started teaching and didn�t begin again until the pool closed Labor Day weekend. But somehow � I don�t know exactly why � it is no longer so hard. And I�ve begun to have enough perspective to know that it was time to retire my old shoes. I was starting to feel the rocks in the trail. I needed more ankle support on uneven trails. I invested in some shoes designed for off-roading and the difference is noticeable.

And yet I find the shoes a little unnerving. They don�t really feel like my shoes. They certainly don�t look like my shoes. I would never have shoes like that. Would I? Part of me longs to stud them with safety pins and draw long curving lines with a new black Sharpie along their sides, the way I might have in high school. But for now, anyway, their only adornment is a thick layer of mud from the river�s edge as I tried to step close enough to skip a stone across the water.

0 people said it like they meant it