I Told Them I Was Tired. That Wasn't It.

Last fall, a state park, my wife and me and another couple. Nothing ambitious — a normal trail on a good day, the kind of thing you say yes to before anyone's finished asking.

By about mile five the ball of my right foot had gone from an ache to something hotter and more insistent, and my ankle had started doing the thing where it isn't unreliable exactly, just tired enough that you're aware of every root and rock. I was still walking fine. I was just spending a lot more attention on it than anybody else was.

Then somebody said there was one more trail worth doing before we headed back, and everyone made the noise people make when they agree.

What I said was: "You guys can keep going if you want. I think I'm done for today."

I said it lightly. I put it in the register you'd use for I've had a good day and I'm ready for a beer, and everyone took it that way, because why wouldn't they.

Here's what was actually true. I wasn't tired. I wanted to get to the truck and get my shoes off, and I'd have said very nearly anything to make that happen without it turning into a conversation about my feet.

That's the version I told at the time. Here's the version that was actually true: my feet had been the limiting factor for years, and I'd built a set of habits around not admitting it.

The habits you don't notice you have

Look at this list and be honest about how many you recognise.

• You know where the benches are.
• You take the elevator for one floor.
• You park closer than you need to, and you'll circle to get it.
• You say "you go ahead, I'll wait here."
• You've stopped saying yes to things that involve standing.
• You take your shoes off in the car before you've left the parking space.
• You have a mental map of every place you go, organised by where you can sit.

None of these feel like a decision. Each one is a small, sensible accommodation. Together they're a life getting quietly smaller, and the reason is somewhere south of your ankles.

Why it takes so long to work out

Because foot pain lies about where it comes from.

By the time you feel it, you've usually been compensating for a while. You shift your weight to the outside of the foot to keep pressure off a hot spot. That changes your ankle angle. That changes your knee. That changes your hip. Within an hour you're walking differently, and by evening the thing that hurts most might be your lower back.

So you go looking for a back problem. Or you decide it's your knees. Or you decide it's your age, which is the most comfortable answer available because it doesn't require you to do anything.

I went with age. I've had some knee stiffness on and off, so I built a tidy little theory where the knee was making me walk differently and the feet were downstream of that. It held up for two or three years, mostly because I never tested it.

The thing that finally made it obvious

There wasn't a moment. I want to be straight about that, because the version of this story with a dramatic turning point would be a better story and it wouldn't be mine.

It was gradual, and what it actually looked like was a slow accumulation of small avoidances until one day the pattern was too obvious to keep not seeing. Nobody said anything to me. I just eventually ran out of ways to explain it as something other than my feet.

What I changed, in order of how much it mattered

1. I measured my feet. End of the day, standing, both feet, width included. Left 11.34 × 4.45 inches, right 11.46 × 4.57. That converts to a US 12 and a 12.5, in a 2E to 3E width. I'd been buying 11.5 in a standard width for thirty years. This cost nothing and explained the most.

2. I bought for width, not length. Which meant accepting that a shoe that looks slightly broader is the one I need. Took me a while to stop caring about that.

3. I started lacing properly. A heel lock at the top eyelet stops your foot sliding forward on descents. Ten seconds, free, and it removed a specific pain I'd had for years.

4. I stopped waiting for shoes to break in. Three days on carpet. If it hurts at the toes on day three, back it goes.

5. I put decent socks on. Not cotton. Cotton holds moisture, moisture softens skin, soft skin blisters. This is a five-dollar fix that I ignored for two decades.

What actually changed afterwards

Four months into a wider fit, the practical difference is that my forefoot isn't squeezed after an hour or two, and I can go a good deal further before the burning shows up. On uneven ground my right ankle feels steadier, which I wasn't expecting and hadn't gone looking for.

I want to be careful here, because the version where a pair of boots changes a man's life is a sales pitch and you'd be right to distrust it. What happened was narrower than that.

Long days are still long days. Seven or eight miles on hard ground and the ball of my right foot will let me know about it by the evening. It just starts a lot later and it doesn't have the same edge.

The thing that was purely a fit problem stopped being a problem. That turned out to be most of it, and not all of it. What actually changed is that I've stopped planning the day around it.

If you recognised yourself in that list

Start with the free thing. Tonight, at the end of the day, stand on a sheet of paper and trace both feet. Measure length and width. Look up what that width actually is in your size.

If it turns out you need a wider shoe, you'll have learned something useful whether you buy ours or not. Our orthopedic boots are built wide with an orthopedic footbed — but the measurement is the part that matters and it's free.

The benches will still be there. You just won't be planning around them.

Orthopedic Hiking Boots · $89.95

General information, not medical advice.

Eric is 54 and is a contributor to the Northman's Outdoor blog.