Why I Run in Nikes

When we walked in the workers immediately recognized my older brother, he had only been running for 3 years, but the workers loved him for some reason. Anyway, one of the employees came up to me and asked if I needed help. I told them that I had just started running and was needing to find a new pair of shoes. They went to the back and brought out a stack of different shoes for me to try on. When I put the first pair on they had me run on the treadmill so they could tell if I pronated or not. Once they knew if I needed supportive shoes or neutral shoes they told me which pairs I should try on. I can remember putting a pair of nikes on first and liking them, but then I tried on a pair of asics and they I thought I liked them more. They were super comfortable and my mom didn’t think I should get the Nikes because she didn’t think they made good running shoes. So I went with the Asics and ran in them for the rest of my seventh grade season.

Even though they were comfortable, they seemed to fall apart really fast. The fabric around the heel would pull apart and then a piece of plastic would rub against my heels and would make them bleed. At first my family just assumed that I had worn out my shoes and it was time to get a new pair, but after this happened on my second pair we decided it was time to switch shoes. So, my mom and I drove back to the running shoe store in Greenwood and bought a pair of Nikes that I had tried on at the beginning. They were a pair of Nike Pegasus’ and they were grey and light purple. I was super excited to be back in Nikes and hopefully not have to worry about the pesky piece of plastic digging into my heel. 

I started running in my new shoes right away. I can remember my first run in them like it was yesterday. I was in 8th grade and for practice we ran to a park that was a little less than half a mile from our school. At the park we stretched and did a core workout before we went out on our run. The route we ran that day was one we did quite a bit. It started at the park and was a rectangle that went down toward the elementary school I went to and back up towards the park. I usually ran with the same group of girls because we were all the same pace, but this time I ran with a group that was just a little bit faster than what I usually went. I felt so strong that day. All the fatigue that I had been feeling was gone and I could just run. Maybe this had nothing to do with my new shoes, but they were so much lighter than my old running shoes and fit around my narrow foot better than any running shoe ever had. I felt like they had made a world of a difference! 

I continued to run in Nike pegasus’ all through high school and plan on running in them as long as Nike makes them. I can put five hundred plus miles on them without the shoes falling completely apart, which was a huge plus after the shoes I had run in before. Another plus to the Nike Pegasus was that when I got them I didn’t feel like it took long at all for me to break them in. Some of my teammates would have to wear bandaids on their heels when they first started running in a new pair of shoes because they would rub so bad until they broke them in. My older brother had also switched to a pair of Nikes, but his were the Nike Structures. He was running eighty to ninety miles a week so the fact that his shoes held up as well as they did was amazing.

I’m not saying that Nikes are the best running shoes for everyone, but from my personal experience they are worth giving a try. They hold up great and are incredibly comfortable. Let’s not forget how many colors they come in!