I made a really stupid mistake recently. To explain the significance, first you need to know some background information.

I’ve been running in low-drop or zero-drop shoes for the better part of a decade. These shoes are very different from “traditional” running shoes because they eliminate a full centimeter’s worth of cushion between the heel and the ground. The change in this cushioning has an impact on, ahem, the impact.

Interestingly enough, most of the “super shoes” that have been coming out over the past few years, the ones with carbon-fiber plates and pronounced rockers, fall into the low-drop category.

My mistake was that I went to the local running store and I decided to try something new. I wanted to try a shoe with a much bigger heel-toe drop than I was used to, and I had my reasons. Since the Big Sur Marathon has more than 2,000 feet of descent, and I know that I become a heel striker on steep descents (as do most runners), I wanted to try a “traditional” pair of running shoes with a 12mm heel-toe drop.

Over the past few weeks, I slowly rotated this shoe into my shoe rotation. At any point, I usually have half a dozen pairs of running shoes that include trainers and “racing” shoes, across trail and road. Things seemed to be going great after a few runs, so I laced them up for a long road run.

My long run was going well, as expected, until about 14 miles in. I started to feel a sharp pain on my left kneecap. It steadily got worse over the next few miles. Since I’m stubborn, I finished the planned 18 miles rather than quitting early.

The next morning, while going up and down stairs, the kneecap pain persisted. So, I took the day off. I did the smart thing, after doing the dumb thing the day before, and I need to acknowledge the smart decisions as much as the dumb ones. The day after, I ran a few easy miles in my old zero-drop shoes, but unfortunately the pain returned, albeit slightly, after 4-5 miles. So, I took the next two days off.

I finally was able to run 4-5 miles pain-free, and I spent the next two weeks (the weeks that I traveled in Italy, if you read my posts from Rome and Florence) building my mileage back up slowly.

Now, 3 weeks after the long run that ended painfully, I’m back to training normally. I got rid of the new shoes. I should’ve known better.

There are rules that long-time distance runners have heard many times, but that we all break on occasion. Most of us have broken the 10 percent rule that advises weekly volume increases of no more than 10%. Most of us have broken the 30 percent rule around long runs, which tells us to keep our long run distance to 30% or less of our weekly volume.

The rule around shoes is less cited, but widely acknowledged - most runners develop loyalty to a single brand, or a small set of brands, through trial-and-error. Shoes are the most important piece of gear to a runner. Once you find what works, you don’t change it. You definitely don’t go buying a shoe that not only is a new brand, but also inspires an entirely new gait. My choice of a new shoe with 12mm heel-toe drop was a poor, poor decision, given the context that I hadn’t run in a shoe with more than 8mm drop in 7 consecutive years.

A difference of millimeters seems so small, but it’s incredibly significant over the course of a long run. A 3-hour marathoner has a stride length of 130cm. This means that they take approximately 32,500 steps over the course of a marathon. A difference of millimeters in heel cushion, multiplied by tens of thousands of steps, becomes a difference in force applied over shoe foam thicknesses far taller than our bodies. Small things can matter a lot.

I know better than to change what works, and I was glad for this reminder more than 20 weeks before a target race. It’s also a reminder to keep training simple. Do what I know. Eat well, rest, do strength and mobility work, run easy, occasionally run hard and stick to the gear and protocols that are familiar to me. A good training block for a long-time runner isn’t rocket science, but it is time-consuming and boring when it’s done right.

My original reasoning for trying the large heel-toe drop shoe was because I thought it will help to cushion the excessive heel striking that I’ll encounter during the Big Sur Marathon, shortly after the Boston Marathon. What I failed to think about was the fact that the absolute best way I can prepare myself for the race is to run workouts at similar paces on similar terrain. No piece of gear is going to be a substitute for the adaptations that a body can make, given the right stimuli. That’s why we train in the first place. We induce hours’ worth of physical stress every week in order to prepare ourselves for success in tough conditions on race day. There’s no piece of gear that can substitute for specific training.

During the next 20 weeks, I’m only going to be running in shoe brands that are tried and true for me over the past few years. For me, this means Altra and Adidas. They’re familiar, comfortable, and I have a history of personal best times in them. I was wrong to believe that some new, shiny, unfamiliar piece of gear could bring me any better chance of success. I’ll be sticking with my boring routines and familiar brands for the rest of this training cycle.