I threw away my favorite shoes today. Calling them shoes at this point is overstating their structural integrity. They each had a hole in the sole, the tread was completely worn off, the uppers had split long ago freeing my toes of the constraints of laces.
I don’t remember where I met those shoes. I know they weren’t my first pair of Saucony Kinvara 3s. I had just come back from Asia and was trying to figure out my life. To keep myself disciplined I had signed up for a marathon and fell in love with the Kinvaras. I destroyed shoes quickly despite my light gait because of my wide forefoot. I always tore the uppers of shoes just before the midfoot. The combination of high volume training, my inability to find another shoe that I could even tolerate, and a propensity to destroy shoes lead me to pick up shoes anytime I found them on sale. Every other pair I bought was white and yellow; my sole neon orange pair became my favorite. They carried me through the end of my marathon training and followed me to California. When I hopped on my bicycle, determined to know the California coastline intimately, those orange Kinvaras came with me. By the end of that trip the left upper had split open. I grew to love them as my bike shoes because they had broken just so that they were flexible in all the ways you want a bike shoe to be without being completely broken. I rode that bike everywhere, and so came the shoes. We had several good years but now, the holes are too noticeable and the sand gets caught in little tears in the fabric and won’t come out.
Marie Kondo says that if an item doesn’t spark joy, you should get rid of it. My shoes were my companion through many adventures that sparked joy. While I will remember them fondly for all the good times we had, it is time to retire them and make room for a new adventure partner.