the saga of the sleepy feet

So, I'm training for a 10K run on the Fourth of July and my training hasn't been going very well because my feet were falling asleep whenever I ran more than a mile. And let's face it, it isn't fun to run when you are in bad shape. It's even worse when you can't feel your feet.

I talked to a lot of people about my "condition". I visited several running blogs and spoke with my boss, an accomplished triathlete for advice. Most of the recommendations I heard were to go up a shoe size and make sure my laces were loose. My boss also added that if my feet were falling asleep when I was running, then clearly, I wasn't running HARD enough.

And if he wasn't my boss ... he might have received an uppercut for that comment.

This past weekend, a sports doctor came to our running practice. After listening to him talk about a host of injuries that can occur with running, I posed my problem for his consideration.

His first thought was that my shoes were too tight. However, I am wearing a full size and a half larger than I typically wear because I bought my running shoes soon after I had given birth to Henry and my feet were still at gargantuan proportions.

His second thought was that perhaps I was anemic and when I would vigorously exercise, blood which normally carries oxygen to all parts of my body, would be reduced to delivering it to my primary organs. As a result, my lower extremities would be deprived of oxygen and doze off. I've been borderline anemic several times in my life, so I suppose this is a possibility.

His third and final thought was that perhaps I had a condition wherein vigorous exercise would cause my big burly calf muscles to restrict the blood flowing to my feet and they would go numb. Apparently, there are some stretching exercises that might help with this.

Before I begrudgingly took off on my run, his assistant showed me a new way of lacing up my shoes and whoa ... this simple fix made a huge difference. Here I had been feeling all cynical like "NO! My shoes aren't TOO small. NO! I don't have them laced TOO tightly. Who do you think I am?? An IDIOT?!" And well, I'm not going to answer that.

But, I AM going to show you this new lacing technique in the off chance it helps someone out there who has feet that fall to sleep when they run.

Have you ever noticed that your running shoe has an eye hole that seems to be sitting back there, all alone and unlaced?


If you can't feel your feet when you exercise, you might want to consider using it.


Apparently, this eye hole was specifically designed for people to use when lacing their shoes. Why it is that I've spent 37-years on this planet and never once used that eye hole before is a MYSTERY.


After you lace your shoes up as you normally would do ... you feed your lace in to the oft ignored eye hole - from the outside, looping in.


You make a loop with your lace ...


And then bring it across to the tongue of your shoe, feeding it in to the loop on the other side.


Repeat this process by bringing the other shoe lace across. Then, now this is important, before you tighten the laces, you want to make sure that your heel is positioned in the far back "heel box" of your shoe. The best way to accomplish this is to push your heel down in your shoe, and flex your toes up. This will help to "seat" your heel correctly. Or so they say.


Next, tie your laces as you normally would.


Once I take an iron supplement, exercise my calves and lace my shoes more loosely, maybe, just maybe, I'll have the stamina to get OFF the couch and play hide and seek with my children.



If I should dare to dream.