Running & Financial Privilege

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

I was twelve when I started running. My first running shoes were a heavy pair of grey and black Nikes with those weird shock absorber things in the heels. I eventually upgraded to Asics, until I went to college and had to wear Adidas, per the athletic department. Since graduating, I’ve run almost exclusively in Altra’s because I enjoy the zero drop feature alongside the more natural, wide toe box.

But when I started running, I didn’t really care about shoes. I had whatever my parents bought me, and we were always on the lookout for a deal, buying last season’s model at a discounted rate. I ran in cotton Soffe shorts, leggings, basketball shorts, stiff Kohls athletic shorts, whatever I had. I had, and still have, sports bras from TJ Maxx, and socks from who knows where. I ran in big sweatshirts in the winter, and in bright yellow t-shirts in the summer, so cars could see me. Nobody around me had expensive gear, and gear didn’t really matter. What mattered was running.

I used the watch face of one of my father’s broken watches to time myself when I did intervals. I’d just start on a whole minute: 7:25, let’s say, and see where I ended from there. I didn’t have a GPS watch, but my dad would drive along the country roads where I grew up, measuring the distance using the speedometer in his blue…