Finding a perfect running shoe is the closest thing we have to real-life magic. Shoe stores are the Ollivanders Wand Shop of our painfully mundane Muggle lives. After all, shoes become an extension of our bodies.
How do I explain that feeling when you just know you love a running shoe? I’m a test editor at Runner’s World—reviewing and explaining shoes is my trade. But that particular alchemy defies explanation. It could be the fit or feel, or maybe superstition, but sometimes you just know they will carry you through whatever mileage lies ahead.
Running Shoes - Gear Brooks PureFlow. Lightweight and sleek, they are the kind of shoe people compliment you on as you board the Green Line after the Boston Marathon, despite the rest of you looking like leftover meatloaf in a space blanket. In the PureFlow I felt like I could fly. The shoe even helped me land my dream job. In my Runner’s World application, I needed to review a shoe and there was no question which one I’d use.
My devotion started in early 2017, when the PureFlow 4 helped me take second place at the Ocala Marathon in Central Florida. That podium was the first in a series of amazing changes in my life. Runner’s World—working here seemed like a pipe dream back then—had accepted my freelance pitches. I had one semester to go for my master’s in journalism from NYU, and I was set to intern at Women’s Health. All the while, I was training for my fifth consecutive Boston Marathon, hanging out with friends, and consuming more guacamole and margaritas than any human deserves.
It sounds crazy, but I had this nagging feeling that things were going too well. No matter what, I couldn’t shake this inexplicable feeling of dread.
A few weeks after I finished Boston in PureFlow 6s the color of roasted cashews (my favorite nut), I booked a flight to celebrate Mother’s Day with my parents in Florida. This is how peculiar, serendipitous, and cruel life can be: Within a week of my booking, my mom told me she had cancer.
Suddenly, cancer permeated my life. It was this ominous invader that tainted everything I did, draining my emotions and stealing my attention, even though I wasn’t the one who had it. One night, as my classmates were drinking beer, I paced outside the bar on my cell phone comforting my mom, telling her I was going to be all right. Another night, I found a carton of spoiled milk I’d absentmindedly left in the liquor cabinet after mixing a nightcap two days earlier.
When I landed in Florida, my mom was already in the ICU. The next morning, I went out for a three-mile run. My mind is usually clear when I run. I focus on my form, check my pace on my watch. But when M83’s “Wait” played on my iShuffle, I thought about the way my mom looked in her hospital bed. Something broke. I stopped and sobbed, started running, then stopped and sobbed again, and again, and again, until I was back.
Two days later—and less than two weeks after her diagnosis—my dad and I signed the form to take my mom off life support. All I could do was eat peanut butter Twix from the vending machine, cry in the bathroom, and pick the skin around my nails as I watched my mom die.
After, I ran every morning before the consequences of her death set in, before my dad and I made phone calls, before we researched funeral homes and chose an urn. I spent Mother’s Day going through photos of my mom for the memorial video and compiling a list of her favorite songs to play at the service (lots of Tears for Fears and Jay and the Americans). My left eye developed a twitch. Sleep didn’t come easily. At night I got lost in the dark as I lay in bed. Before I drifted off, I thought about how everything I know will eventually die.
My mom wasn’t A Part of Hearst Digital Media People on road trips. And yet, she had supported my decision to switch majors as an undergraduate from music to writing, despite years of singing lessons. “Writing is your thing,” she said, just like running would also become my thing. She may not have partaken in my hobby, but she always made sure I had new running clothes under the Christmas tree, and would get on my back if I forgot to send her race photos for framing.
The day she died, I asked my dad if I could keep my return flight to run in the Brooklyn Half following the memorial. I didn’t know whether my mom would have wanted me to stick around Florida, or return to New York and drift around my apartment, kitchen cabinets brimming with misplaced perishables. But I had to believe returning to the city and racing was the right thing to do—and that my mom would be cool with it. I had to keep moving so the dark would just be night again.
After the memorial, I packed up my cashew PureFlows, and flew back to New York. I ran the half in Brooklyn. And then another half in Boston. Six races and a new pair of storm-cloud gray PureFlow 6s later, I PR’d at the Long Beach Marathon and came in fourth place.
Three Shoes You Might Love as Much as My PureFlows
Trevor Raab Saucony Kinvara 9 $110
BUY NOW
The Kinvara has our editors reminiscing over their speed from college days.
Trevor Raab Altra Escalante Racer $140
BUY NOW
So light and so snug, I was surprised by the eerie familiar ride when I ran in this shoe.
Trevor Raab Adidas Adizero Boston 7 $120
BUY NOW
Responsive and light—just 7.1 ounces (size 7)—yet forgiving enough for running long.
I was unstoppable. I was a machine. I raced, interned, freelanced, went to classes, dated, partied, graduated, and raced more. There were fleeting moments on my runs in Central Park where I felt sadness, but when I raced, all of my attention was in the moment. After that day in May, I never cried on a run again. I didn’t stress about not having a journalism job lined up, turn-ing 30, my cat dying—my mom’s death. I was so busy I began fearing apathy instead of anguish.
But soon enough, control slipped away. As I ran the 2018 Boston Marathon in PureFlow 7s, my golden era of running came to an injury-riddled end. I’d ignored a twinge in my hamstring leading up to the race and finished with my right leg flopping like a dead fish for seven miles.
Any sane person would have taken a month off from running. But I was due to begin working at Runner’s World, and that machine mindset held until the pain in my leg became unbearable.
Finally, I went on a break. From the PureFlows. From running. On Wednesdays, my new coworkers would run track workouts. I stayed behind eating doughnuts and drinking coconut LaCroix. At physical therapy, I grimaced as my leg was scraped with myofascial tools. There were moments where I felt like I was frozen and everything else was moving forward. I’d think of my mom and how it ended so fast. I’d think about my dad and try to work up courage, knowing that some-day—hopefully far-off—I’d have to brave it alone.
When I was finally given the okay to run again, I took out my beloved ’Flows for one last time, tripped, and smashed the sidewalk. The skin on my knees looked like spaghetti squash. Coinciding with the fall was the realization that the 7s had reached their mileage. It was time to retire my now blood-spattered PureFlows for good.
As my skin healed and scarred—Mom always said I should run with kneepads—I tested other shoes, wrote reviews, tried to get back to racing shape. Then the Nike VaporFly 4% Flyknits ended up in my hands and I did something I hadn’t in two years: I raced in shoes that weren’t a Brooks PureFlow. I crossed the finish line in first place. Relief and triumph washed over me, as well as this unmistakable feeling of guilt.
I know it’s silly to feel like I betrayed the PureFlow—they are just shoes—but that’s how it felt. At a time when I was channeling my grief into something that gave me power, the PureFlows were my conduit. They compelled me to push forward. I wasn’t running away from sorrow, I was chasing after that feeling of being present, heart pumping, feet rushing forward, alive.
Amanda is a test editor at Runner’s World who has run the Boston Marathon every year since 2013; she's a former professional baker with a master’s in gastronomy and she carb-loads on snickerdoodles.
