“Now up until that moment, I would have thought that by age 50, one of the life skills that I had really nailed was tying my shoes, but not so…” – Terry Moore
The first time that David Wilder told me that I was tying my shoes wrong, I listened politely but made no effort to mend my ways. I don’t remember exactly when or how the subject came up, but it must have been during the spring of 2013. David, a 2008 graduate of Concord Academy, had been a captain on the cross country team the very first year that I coached there. We had stayed in touch, and after he graduated from college joined me that season as an assistant coach for Track and Field. Anyway, he told me that my traditional method of tying my shoes was flawed. A single knot, tied in the traditional way, was next to useless and would come undone in no time; a double-knot might hold up for a while, but was still prone to working its way free, especially in wet weather when the ends of the laces became slightly heavier as they absorbed water. There was a better way (he said), a knot that had no inclination to undo itself, but instead would self-tighten during normal use. Continue reading
the runner eclectic 