Happy Father's Day: fathers of all sizes that is!

Last month, I rushed an order for a pair of Brooks Launch to offer to Agnès for Mother's Day. The box arrived a a few days before so, to keep the surprise, I did hide the package in the garage then... forgot about it, oops! We still had a great celebration with the boys on Zoom and Agnès got her new shoes a few days later.

I love this model, it has been my go to trainer and racer for the past 6 years or so (6 model generations) and I logged more than 13,100 miles in them, or about 1/3 of my running log miles. (To tell you how good these shoes are, for me at least, I've averaged 1,143 miles over my first 10 pairs!)

While I was at ordering, I picked a model for me for... Father's Day. As I am home alone this weekend (more on this later), I went back to the garage to pick my gift only to be surprised by the size of the box. I've had more than 70 pairs of Brooks so far and they all came in the same box size. For some weird reasons, this one was significantly bigger. Too bad I was alone because someone would have gotten a good picture of my face when I opened the box: oh my, something wasn't right at all!

I remember going back and forth during the order because the color I wanted --my Quicksilver teammates will have guessed, Royal Blue-- wasn't available in my size, damned. So I clicked on a few other colors and settled on that gray. I guess Royal Blue might have been available in Size 15 then, that would explain why the size had switched.

Oh my, I had never realized someone could have such large and long feet. Sometimes I regret to be short, but never when flying on a plane for instance. As for running, I do have short legs but a long stride, go figure! But I think I'm still much better off being short, lean and light on the trails.

That being said, that episode gave me a much bigger appreciation of the diversity of runners our brands serve. Diversity in sizes and weights that is, short of colors, this reality and inequality we confront right now.

So, to fathers of ALL sizes, shapes and colors, Happy Father's Day!

PS: great thing Brooks offers a True Blue 90-day no-question-asked free return policy (even if you've run in the shoes!). No risk I even sweat on these boats! ;-)