I Blamed My Age for Four Years. It Was My Shoes.

The first sign wasn't pain. It was pulling out my phone and saying we should just get an Uber.

Nashville, four years ago, a weekend away with my wife. We'd spent the day downtown with no particular plan — a few stores, somewhere to eat, the kind of aimless walking that's the entire point of a trip like that. By mid-afternoon the ball and the outer edge of my right foot had gone hot and tight, that pressed-in feeling like you're standing on something that isn't there. The hotel was maybe twenty minutes away on foot.

I said we should get a ride. She said sure. The whole thing took four seconds and neither of us thought about it again.

That was the first time my feet changed our plans. I didn't notice it happening — and over the next few years I'd get very good at not noticing.

I told myself it was getting older. I've had some knee stiffness on and off, so I figured maybe I was walking differently because of that. I stuck with that explanation for two or three years, because it's a comfortable one — it doesn't ask you to do anything.

It was my feet. It had been my feet the whole time.

What I'd been getting wrong

I bought shoes the way most people do: I found a pair that felt fine in the store, in the afternoon, standing on carpet, walking eight feet and back.

Here's the problem with that test. Your feet swell over the course of a day — by up to half a size. A shoe that fits at 3pm on carpet is a shoe that's too narrow by the time you've been up for twelve hours.

And width goes wrong before length does. I bought men's 11 or 11.5 for my entire adult life, on the basis that the shoe went on and my toes weren't hitting the front. I never once thought about width.

The things I tried first (that didn't work)

• Different socks. Thicker, thinner. Neither did much.
• Loosening the laces. This actually helped with the pressure — and then my foot didn't feel secure in the shoe any more. One problem traded for another.
• Drugstore insoles. More comfortable at first, which was the worst outcome, because it kept me looking in the wrong place. After a few hours of walking the same pressure came back.
• Doing less walking. I didn't decide to do this. I just noticed later that I had.

That last one is the one worth paying attention to. What finally made me look properly wasn't the pain — it was catching myself thinking, before we went anywhere, about how much walking would be involved. Five years earlier that thought wouldn't have occurred to me.

What actually changed it

Two things, and the boring one mattered more.

The boring one: I measured my feet properly. End of the day, standing up, both feet, on a sheet of paper.

• Left: 11.34 inches long, 4.45 inches wide
• Right: 11.46 inches long, 4.57 inches wide

I'd expected them to be near enough identical, somewhere around 11.3 or 11.4 long. The length was about what I thought. The width was not.

Converted, that's a US 12 on the left and a 12.5 on the right — and a width somewhere between 2E and 3E. I'd been buying 11.5 in a standard width. A full size short, and two or three width grades too narrow.

Which explains the thing I'd never been able to account for: why it's always the right foot first. My right foot is bigger in both directions. In the same shoe, it's being compressed in two dimensions while the left is only being compressed in one.

Most of us are walking around in a size we were told once, decades ago, and never checked. Feet flatten and widen with age. That's not a defect — it's just what happens, and nobody tells you to go back and re-measure.

The second: I stopped buying anything that tapers at the toe. A toe box that narrows squeezes your toes together at exactly the moment they need to spread — every time you step down.

Why going down is worse than going up

This is the part nobody explained to me, so here it is plainly.

Walking on the flat or going up, your weight travels through your heel and midfoot. Going down — stairs, a slope, a curb, the ramp out of a parking garage — your weight shifts forward. Your foot slides toward the front of the shoe, and your toes absorb the stop.

A single flight of stairs is a dozen of those. A day out is a few thousand.

If your toe box tapers, your toes are already compressed before the first one. That's where the burning across the ball of the foot comes from. That's where black toenails come from, if you've ever wondered. And that's why it feels like a knee problem — you start walking differently to protect your feet, and your knees pay for the new gait.

What I'd tell someone at fifty

1. Re-measure. End of the day, standing, both feet, width and length. Your feet have changed. Mine had.
2. Test going down, not on the flat. Find stairs. Walk down them. Your toes should not touch the front.
3. A thumb's width at the front. Not "a little room." A thumb.
4. Buy for your wider foot. They're rarely the same size. The narrower one can be managed with lacing; the wider one can't be managed at all.
5. Give it three days, not three months. If it hurts on day three, it will hurt on day three hundred. Breaking in is a myth people repeat to justify a bad purchase.

What I wear now

I've been in a roomier toe box and a wider fit for about four months, with better support around the heel and ankle. That's the orthopedic boot we carry — and what's on my feet as I write this.

The first thing I noticed was that my forefoot didn't feel squeezed after an hour or two. Then that I could walk noticeably longer before the burning started. On uneven ground my right ankle feels steadier than it did, which I hadn't expected and wasn't looking for.

And here's the honest part: it didn't fix everything. Seven or eight miles, especially on pavement, and I'll still feel it in the ball of my right foot by the end of the day. It starts much later and it isn't as sharp. But it's still there.

What changed isn't that the problem went away. It's that I don't plan my day around it any more.

The part that matters more than the shoe

If you take one thing from this: go measure your feet tonight. End of the day, standing, on a sheet of paper, with a pencil. Width included.

You may find you've been half a size off for a decade. It costs nothing to check, and it's the highest-return thing you can do before you spend a dollar on anything.

And if it turns out you need the wider pair — we make one.

Orthopedic Hiking Boots · $89.95

General information, not medical advice.

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