A brief scan of the Internet suggested that I needed some fresh shoes after all. I discovered what had really happened: I had given myself two blood blisters from running in shoes too small. When you run for longer than about twenty minutes, your feet start to swell up, just like they do after a night of fearless dancing in heels you swore fitted brilliantly when you bought them. If you’re adding that pressure to the constant slap of foot on unforgiving concrete for a couple of hours, you do in fact replicate the same injury as slamming your thumb in the car door. The thud of toes pressing between trainer toecap and road had been a mighty slam for me on that ten-mile run. It was time to face the music.
Dashing out to buy the right pair of running shoes seemed about as possible as popping down to Denmark Street to buy myself the right Fender Stratocaster. I was clueless. All I knew was “Not too much pink and not too many reflecty bits, like a cheerleader in the eighties, please.” Though vanity and my quest for respect stopped me from wanting shoes that looked “fashion,” I had no idea whether I could pull off anything more professional-looking. But I knew where to go. To the experts! So, enthusiastic little ponytail swishing in the rain, I headed to the London Marathon store in London’s Covent Garden.
On the fascia outside the store is a large digital clock that counts down the days, hours, and minutes to the next London Marathon. I had worked in Covent Garden for years and given the clock an occasional glance at most. I used to laugh on occasion at the earnest expressions of the men within (for they were always men) as I swerved past on the way to a post-work cocktail. Now I needed that store. I needed it urgently.
It seemed best to push aside my quibbles about the store looking very much like one in which a woman had never set foot, and I told myself now that I was a runner, I would be accepted by the staff as one of them. I expected a warm welcome, a kindly listening ear for my queries, perhaps to be addressed in the manner of a colleague or, at the very least, a like-minded spirit.
As I tripped down the street, my nerve started to fade. The numbers flickered above the doorway, counting down. The numbers of days until the marathon seemed very few indeed. Anxieties I thought I’d left behind crept back in. By the time I crossed the store’s threshold, my jaunty gait was all but gone. The glass doors clanged shut behind me, and two men looked up and stared as if I were the newest cowboy in a particularly choosy saloon. These weren’t the kindhearted fellow runners I had been hoping to encounter.
I nodded to them with strained casualness. “Hi,” I mumbled. I edged over to the clothing, circling my target gently. I picked up a couple of tops, ran their curious slithery fabric between my fingers, replaced them on the rack. I held a pair of running bottoms up to my waist, then hurriedly hung them back up. They would no more fit me than an elephant. The younger of the two men approached me. He was wearing serious sportswear and a cap. His tracksuit looked as if it had seen a track rather than just a sofa and some pizza boxes. His gait was confident; he knew his stuff. And he seemed to know I didn’t.
“Can I help you?” he asked, as if unconvinced that he could.
“Yes, actually, I am looking for a pair of running shoes.” A dramatic pause. I stared him in the eye. “Because I am running the London Marathon.”
I awaited the gasps of admiration. Or at least a grunt of camaraderie. Nothing. Not even a shrug. It dawned on me that he probably dealt with chumps like me every day.
“If you’re going to buy running shoes, you’ll need to be measured, and we only do that by appointment, and we don’t have an appointment for a few weeks.”
“It’s okay, I know what size I am.”
“It really doesn’t work like that.” He had not maintained eye contact. I was starting to sweat; I felt a telltale line start to appear down the back of my T-shirt. I pulled at it frantically.
“How does it work? I know my shoe size, and I need some shoes.” This young chap wasn’t going to get the better of me. I had money to spend, and I was determined to spend it.
“Well, you’ll need to run on our @£$@£ machine, and then we’ll need to look at your gait and analyze the data, and then @!$£^, and in case of pronation pfftng.”
Meaningless words were flapping around me. I had no idea what he was saying. Stress was buzzing in my ears like a wasp in a jam jar. “I’m sorry, could you explain that again?”
He repeated himself. He did not explain. Ennui dripped from his every word. He gestured to a scanlike running machine in the corner of the store. This wasn’t going to be like when I was taken to the shoe store as a child to get the new school year’s T-bar shoes. My T-shirt was now sticking to my rib cage, front and back.
“Well,” I said with a heavy intake of breath as I tried to summon my very best Holly Golightly face, “thank you for your time.”
“You need to make an appointment.”
I had no intention of making an appointment here; I was scared witless, intimidated by his talk of footfall and pronation and exhausted by trying to maintain the pretense that I belonged here.
“Yes, thank you, I will call in once I have spoken to my assistant.” I have never had an assistant. I just wanted to go home and put on my slippers. This shop needed to not have me in it anymore. But I stayed for a further two minutes, occasionally lifting and examining a pair of display shoes. I tilted my head in a manner that I assumed indicated great pensiveness, as if I knew what I wanted yet had decided not to get it today. That was very much the impression I told myself I was giving.
Perhaps it wasn’t as long as two minutes, but the burning shame rendered my cheeks a deep shade of crimson, and I left the store sweating and confused. Why had I felt so humiliated? How had one sneering shop assistant managed to make me feel like such an imbecile for wanting something perfectly commonplace and fundamentally sensible?
Over time, my wretchedness turned to rage. How dare they patronize me? They were there to sell me a product. They had the knowledge that I clearly needed to access; why were they obstructing my path? For weeks, months even, I went on thinking that buying running shoes was a rite of passage, an almost mystical experience, an earned privilege.
That is bullshit.
Politeness is politeness in whatever context it occurs, and it is an essential business practice. I can say with confidence that the bloke in the store was either having a very bad day or was just a dick. There is no excuse for being rude to timorous first-time runners, for making them feel stupid for not knowing the correct terminology when they have approached you for help. It takes a lot of courage to go on those first few runs, and either scamming or demeaning them when they are vulnerable and in need of support is unforgivable.
But I’d been cowed for the moment, so I didn’t buy any shoes and went bra shopping instead.
Finding a decent sports bra is as important as getting a decent pair of running shoes. Mercifully, I worked this out sooner rather than later, thus avoiding a nipple-related equivalent to the fate that befell my dearly departed toenails. Wearing the right bra is essential no matter how big or small they are. If, like me, you are a cartoonish size 30FF, you are going to need some hard-core scaffolding.
The good news is that there are some products that can all but stop your boobs in their tracks for hours at a time. These products don’t have to be bizarre combinations of sports and “normal” bras worn over each other, as I have heard some women prefer for running. I have lost count of the number of times women have breezily told me that they can’t run because of their boobs. For all that I love my boobs, they are willful and curious, always seeking a new direction to bounce around in and ever keen to seek attention on the Brighton seafront where I can least deal with the stares. But even the most unruly breasts can be contained. Yes, they can.
During my illustrious years of halfhearted yoga and listless gym attendance, I don’t remember what sports bras I wore, but they were as primitive as they were attention-grabbing. In short, they were insufficient. It was only the relaunch of the Shock Absorber in 2000 that
persuaded me I could take on any sort of long-term exercise without taking someone’s eye out.
Though I can’t presume to speak for women with smaller bra sizes than mine, the problems of running with a fabulous yet unsupported rack are manifold. Even when you lose a little bit of weight, your boobs will still be there, and they’ll start to look even more there. Which can be a problem. Boobs are magnificent; you can rest cups of tea on them, feed your children with them, and bring joy to mankind with them, so it really is more than a small shame when something so practical starts to feel like a burden. No one should be burdened by her knockers.
It is distressing to be exhausted toward the end of a run, experiencing the doubt that you’ll ever make it, only to find a grotty old man staring at your boobs as if he’s found some long-forgotten treasure under a sofa cushion. It is humiliating to see teenage boys or children snigger and whisper as you pass, when you know you’d command their respect in any other environment. It is cringeworthy to see a girlfriend catch her boyfriend copping a quick look when you have done nothing to provoke it. And it is frankly disconcerting to be running along the seafront toward two handsome men, holding hands, clearly a couple, both staring at your untamed breasts.
The worst thing about running with big boobs in the wrong bra is the feeling that you’re doing actual harm. That feeling turns out not to be misguided. I have had more than one physical therapist tell me that most women do more harm to their body while running in the wrong bra than in the wrong shoes. Terrifyingly, when you run, breasts don’t just do the cartoonish up-and-down bounce; they make a figure-eight movement. While you might think that stopping the simple bounce is enough, sports bras are working even harder than that. The real risk of running around unsupported is to your Cooper’s ligaments. Named in the 1840s after anatomist Astley Cooper, these ligaments are what protect the structural integrity of the breast. Breast tissue is heavier than the fat surrounding it, so these suspensory ligaments keep the tissue from sagging or becoming a megaboob. It’s best to look after them, as it is understood that once they are gone, they are gone.
Then there’s the chafing. A bra that is even slightly ill fitting will be unbearable after five miles, and that’s not accounting for added abrasives like rain and sweat. A small eyelet or hook coming undone can feel like someone jabbing a knitting needle in your back, and the slightest unraveling at a seam can be a disaster in sagginess.
A quarter of women wear a sports bra that doesn’t fit, and those are the ones wearing a sports bra at all. The reason most women give for not being properly measured for bra size is that they find it embarrassing. Having suffered my first humiliation at the shoe store, I was more than a little trepidatious, but boob-wise, I experienced excellent customer service. I went to a shop where the staff members go to something called the Boob Academy, which is an academy I can get on board with. The prospect of going to a specialist sports outfitter and trying on a random series of boxed sports bras while men stood three meters away, discussing wicking fabric, was out of the question. Given that you can almost definitely burn up to three hundred calories just in the act of getting into a sports bra, the endeavor of purchasing one needs to be undertaken in a calm, restful environment.
My first run in the Shock Absorber bra was life-changing. It felt like home. I am in no way exaggerating when I say that it changed not just my approach to running but my entire outlook on what I might be capable of. I was snugly bound in a manner not dissimilar to that of Judy Garland in her little blue and white pinafore in The Wizard of Oz. My boobs were pressed to my chest, but unlike with the bra I had been wearing for running, they were not pushed up under my chin. And I was free from that repulsive splayed effect that can only be described as “what you might see if I were lying on a glass table and you were lying beneath it.”
I felt as if my legs and feet were finally free to create momentum that might push me forward, rather than engineer propulsion to encourage my boobs into ever more exciting formations. Similarly, my arms were available to move my body in the right direction, rather than being on standby as emergency dignity shields. It was liberation like I had never known.
My devotion to the bra is such that when my first one reached the end of its life—after what I estimated was over 250 miles of running—I took it apart to see how it was made. It was comprised of seventy-two parts. Seventy-two! Hooks, eyelets, slings within slings, and huge padded arm straps. Each bra is a work of art, available for around forty-five dollars, and I still mourn the demise of my original one. A sentimental favorite. Shock Absorber bras are the result of considerable research begun in 1994 and updated recently, and I remain slightly obsessed with them, as they represent such a huge milestone in the development of my running.
My gleeful bra-based liberty was not without its woes. There is one element to sports bra wearing that I had to work out for myself: Sweat is really, really itchy. Imagine absentmindedly rubbing the deliciously crunchy granules of an expensive salt scrub over freshly shaved sensitive skin. That’s the level of pain that can be inflicted on a pair of boobs unprepared for running. If you’re running for over an hour, either on a sunny day or under some nice warm layers, you will create little gullies of sweat in all sorts of unexpected crevices. The sweat will dry in salty patterns. And the tiny granules of salt will rub.
For the first few runs I did prior to true bra enlightenment, I thought that the stinging was some sort of allergy to the fabric my bras were made of. I would collapse at home, panting, and hurl the bra from me as fast as I could, shrieking about how free I felt. For two or three days, I would have a tiny ring of pinprick-sized blisters around my rib cage and over my shoulders, where the bra had been working the hardest. After a while five or six small scars appeared.
Over time I have learned that the double whammy of a well-fitting bra with a nice dollop of Vaseline underneath is the answer. (More sophisticated and discerning runners swear by Body Glide, but Vaseline served me well and I recommend it especially for beginners as it’s a product most people have on hand.) As for those scars, I used to be terribly self-conscious about them, but now I am of the opinion that there is enough else in the area to distract, and if that doesn’t work, I choose not to care. They’re battle wounds; they’re part of me. They are a minuscule price to pay for the thousands of dollars that I have raised to help those in actual pain.
My boobs were now part of the team, working with me and not against me. In truth, they weren’t going to get out much unless I tackled the gruesome problem of new running shoes.
My horrendous experience at the Marathon Store might have put me off indefinitely had it not been for a training day organized by London Marathon that my brother dragged me to just a few weeks later. There was a series of lectures on pacing, training, injury, and nutrition in a university hall. It was the first time I had seen other potential runners. I was terrified at the prospect of viewing them all in an enclosed space, lithe and confident.
The reality could not have been further from the truth. I arrived very late, freezing cold from spending half an hour trying to park my Vespa in the January wind, and finally found my brother. We sat through the morning of interesting lectures, but my mind inevitably wandered, and I found myself studying the faces—and bodies—around me, trying to work out what sort of a runner everyone was. I was shocked and relieved by the staggering diversity of bodies. Not everyone looked as I’d imagined real runners would look.
At lunchtime it was revealed, to my immense joy, that there was a roomful of running-shoe fitters. The marathon sponsor was Adidas, so the brand options were limited, but to my joy, the staff members were very different from those at the London Marathon store. I was asked to take off my running shoes and run across a sensor. Then I returned to where the assistant was standing, and he showed me on a large screen the way my feet fell. There, in flaring red, were the exact spots that had hurt so much on that dastardly ten-mile run. He gently pointed out to me that for the last three months, I had been r
unning in shoes that were almost threadbare. No wonder it felt as if the pads of my feet were worn flat. They were. As for my toes, in shoes that were half a size too small, they didn’t stand a chance. I was advised that for long-distance running, I should buy shoes half a size too big to allow for the foot to expand. I sat down and waited for my brother to come back from his fitting. He reappeared twenty minutes later with a grin. He’d been told he was making all the same mistakes I was.
At the end of the training day, we left with running shoes that fitted properly for the purpose we were intending to use them. Not everyone needs to get measured immediately or to make as great an emotional odyssey out of the experience as I did. But if you do end up running more than every now and again, you need to buy sensibly. The Adidas shoes that I bought were perfect; my feet felt like Mariah Carey’s might after a professional rubdown. And I love them for what I achieved in them. Today they are in a state of terminal filth, and I’d be repulsed to wear them again. They sit in my parents’ garage, driving my mother mad, but I know they’re there, and I like knowing that they are there.
Once the clouds of my shoe stress had parted, it seemed obvious that the entire university hall was filled with people as desperate as I was to discover that they were not alone—that they weren’t the slowest or the fattest or the ones with the least information. We were all in it together. I was awash with relief. When I expressed this to my brother, he agreed heartily before adding, “But it’s not as if we don’t know anyone who has run a marathon.” I frowned, confused, before I remembered: our dad. I thought of him that first time in his Green Flash. He had worn through the soles by the end of the race, but I didn’t recall ever having heard him complain about it. Indeed, despite the story being extraordinary, I believed that we were the only people he had shared it with. His approach to running was so simple, so self-sufficient. While I was hanging on to support wherever I could find it—from the team at Sense, the Internet, a magazine I found on the train—my dad seemed to have a firm grasp on the key fact: Only you can run a marathon. No one else can do it for you.
Running Like a Girl Page 4