The North Face Altamesa 500: My One-Shoe Quiver

I have been practicing heresy for almost a year now. By engaging in an illicit love affair with a pair of The North Face Altamessa 500s, I am sinning against the church of modern outdoor gear culture. I’m finally ready to confess it all.

I’m wearing a pair of shoes to do essentially every activity I enjoy. I’m only keeping one pair of “exercise shoes” in my suitcase and not giving any thought to additional, activity-dependent shoes. Actually, this is not true. The Altamesa are also my airport shoes, so they rarely come in the suitcase.

I wear these running (on trails) And sidewalk). I wear them while walking. I’ve worn them while hiking. I’ve worn them while snorkeling on the North Shore of Oahu. I’ve worn them in my adult Irish dancing classes, allowing them to work equally well as soft shoe ghillies and hard shoes. I wear the Altamesa to almost every school drop-off I can think of. In fact, the day I wore a pair of gladiator-style sandals, my new shoes were a real topic of conversation among other parents. In short, I have found the do-it-all shoe, and I’m never going back to a life of specialized shoes.

To be a devotee of everything shoes, one has to admit that they are probably trading in “extreme performance” for the mental ease that comes with zero forethought about what to wear. After all, highly specialized gear exists for a reason. And this is usually due to advanced design or technological features that allow its user to perform better in their chosen activity. i think about debut forever sharkskin inspired swimsuit The 2000 Olympics are a classic example of the role special gear plays in performance. In imitation of nature’s design, swimwear allowed athletes to break more records than ever before, and those who wore the new technical suits won the lion’s share of medals that year. Gear can make all the difference.

But I don’t care what difference it might make to my performance in life.

When I talked to my physical therapist about the dangers of using one pair of trail running shoes for different activities, his response was clear: “Doing this won’t hurt you, but wearing heavier trail shoes for other types of running may slow your pace a bit.” Sir, at the speed I’m going, I’m not sure anyone—including me—will notice the effect of the speed.

We live in a time of unprecedented choice when it comes to what we should buy. As we languish, caught in the sticky web of capitalism, looking for an escape, targeted ads punch their way straight to the heart of our personal vulnerabilities, telling us that they not only know what our problems and our insecurities are, but also know how to fix them.

This can lead to wastage of money and unnecessary worry as well as fatigue in decision making. i really am very tired Deciding what to pack, what to wear, what to buy, what would be the holy grail for my appearance and my training. I’m also extremely tired of how much everything costs. Along with everything else, I’ve given myself the gift of using my limited cognitive resources on some of the other things I care about, like my child, my writing, my spouse, and my hobbies.

In his 2007 book Ordinary Mythology What I talk about when I talk about runningNovelist Haruki Murakami explains his decision to wear Mizuno in marathon training as a simple matter of long-held preference. “They’re light, and the sole cushioning is a little firm,” he writes. “I like the fact that this brand of shoes has no extra bells and whistles. It’s my personal preference, nothing more.”

Well, the North Face Altamessa 500 has four-millimeter lugs that let me walk without slipping on damp, mossy Seattle sidewalks. It provides a lot of cushion without a lot of weight (8.6 ounces per shoe), and my joints feel pretty good when I jog in them. My humble opinion is that people compliment them and they look good. I really like them.

They are my personal preferences, nothing more.