Possibly one of the best things in a runner’s life is new shoes.

You build the anticipation as your old shoes clock up the k’s and you notice those little signs of replacement - the hardness, the faded upper, the worn soles. The excitement builds. You have justified a new pair. The financial outlay has been earned by months of training, with a tired, dilapidated pair of sneakers to show for it.

You have done the research, read the magazines, and possibly even done sneaky trys on with new pairs in the aisles at rebel. You’re not cheating on your old pair, your moving on, it was an inevitable and amicable split with your runners to retire to gym use and garage-based duties. But now you have that shiny new pair in your sights.

You look at it on the websites, show your significant other how it now has asymetrical lacing, hoping for a response of ‘God! That is not possible! Wait - let me see that - this is the greatest thing since the fork! Go buy 4 pairs now!’. Of course you don’t get that response but you look at testers responses on a littany of running forums and pages. Reassuring yourself that you are buying the best thing ever put on feet.

Then payday comes. Cash is available for the purchase. You try the left one on, and just like you hoped, it fits perfectly. Oh shoesalesman I am your cinderella. You try the other on. That’s perfect too. You stand up, feel your weight pour into the shoes perfectly, and you prance about the store to ‘test’ them out. Stores realise we like doing this ritual and have incorporated treadmills and cameras, and other such technological gimmickry to win us over. But our hearts - and soles (pun intended) - were won over long before we stepped in the store, for we are runners.

The sadness of taking them off and putting them in the box again is on ly offset by the joy of leaving the store with that big box of size 13s under your arm. The pride of walking back to your car with a large purchase. Then the moment of triumph, walking in the front door, showing your adoring family your shiny new purchase. Explaining the concepts of a biomorphic fit to a 1 year-old as she chews on the box. And then you do the greatest thing ever, you take that new shoe out of the box for the first time since you bought it. Hold it lovingly in your hands like a new baby, glancing at it from all angles, and then put your nose right in and take a big whiff of the new shoe smell. The euphoria rushes over you, sending you to some sort of footwear sensory nirvana. They should bottle this smell and sell it as perfume and cologne to attract other runners.

Of course, you put the shoes (with the new socks you bought with them) straight on - to break them in. Wearing them with pride as you vacuum, feed the cats, any excuse to walk about will do. We need milk? Bang - I’m off to the milk bar.

Then comes the first run. You are supposed to break these shoes in with gentle small efforts and walking. I’m more like a teenage couple - I can only hold myself back so long before I have burst out and go for it. You strap in for your long run, and take off as every step feels like you are walking on springboards, bouncing effortlessly down the road. Life is a dream. You avoid puddles, mud, conspicuous dust, nothing will stop your new shoes. This is what running is. You don’t care that you look like a bloke in new shoes and fancy gear, because you are moving, and you feel so good.

Then you get back home, probably with a blister or two as you adjust from your old pair, but you have a good time on your watch and smile on your face, and a shiny pair of shoes - waiting to do it all over again.

At this point I would like to pay tribute to the old runners. They have clocked up hundreds of k’s. Ran pb’s. Ran in the heat, rain, cold, light, dark. Then have seen some crazy things. They shared good times and bad, they will be put in the laundry cupboard but not forgotten.

God bless shoes.