OK, I have a shoe problem.

Longtime readers (although I have no longtime readers) will recall The Great Piranha Experiment, in which I ran in a hapless pair of Asics way past when they thought they would be retired to Papua New Guinea, drinking fruity beverages with little umbrellas. Not that shoes can drink, and not that they have festive beverages in Papua New Guinea. Oh, how I hate Papua New Guinea.

I’m having flashbacks of those days with the blue kazoos. I had planned to retire them at 500 miles. And then at 600, and then eventually. And now here we are at 766.89 and they’re still yelling for me to keep up.

I have all these other shoes ostensibly in the rotation. No. 1, named after beloved Guy Clark since it’s an Austin shoe, gobi juan kenobee because I loves a good pun. George Harrison because all things must pass, racer x because there must have been some point in my life when I thought the escalante was a good idea (other than repeating “escalante” to my oncologist to the point where he suggested we adjust my medication, only to discover there were none to adjust.

And, spalding gray. Spalding, of course, is EXACTLY the same shoe as the blue kazoo, only grayer. I ran about 40 miles in them to discover they are indeed identical twins, give or take 700 miles. A little more cushioned, a little better smelling, no tell-tale holes in the upper. And then I put them back in the closet.

Rotate shoes to avoid repetitive wear injuries, they say. Retire them after 400 miles, the Garmin tells me. Eat an occasional vegetable maybe.

And yet, here we are. 766 miles. A pile of shoes sitting on the bench, desperately hoping to DH. Does candy corn count as a vegetable?

Which is how we ended up on the trail today as always, the soles worn down like sandstone, desperately trying to find some traction on the downhills, the toes hiding from rocks while cursing the lack of the rubber bumpers that gobi juan, a perfectly fine trail shoe, would provide.

Why? I have no idea. I only know that we’ve come this far; might as well go for four figures.