I’ve been wearing the same kind of running shoes since 8th grade, I think. They’re New Balance motion stability shoes. I’m not much of an overpronater, I just have low arches and always needed a high-mileage shoe in high school. I’ve been wearing the same two pairs of 856s since the end of freshman year, and even my mild running for the past few years added up to really needing a new pair. So my parents granted my birthday wish, and you can see the difference between my old 856s, right, and my new 858s, left.

By the way, this post is going back to to pre-journalism obsessions, so ordinary readers may find this totally dull. Oh well. Keep reading for awesome shoe lineage and a brief history of my running.

It’s always kind of scary to try a new model. You don’t know what kind of changes they’ve made. I started out on the 852s like a decade ago almost, and I wanted to see how they’ve evolved. Suprisingly, given the obsessive levels and internet presence of the running community, there was no obvious site about “See how your running shoe has evolved!” So I pieced this together myself.

I don’t think I ever had 853s, and couldn’t find a good picture anyway. Digging up these pictures of long-forgotten models was kind of emotional for me. The 854 picture is actually the men’s version, but finally finding it was like remembering what an old friend looks like when you didn’t even notice you’d forgotten. 854s were what I trained in during high school. I ran thousands of miles in probably five or six pairs of those shoes. (Running shoes wear out after roughly 400 miles, though there are a lot of variables involved. In high school I was running 60 to 100 miles a week. I did not get new shoes every month.)

By the time my high school career was winding down, it was hard to find new pairs of 854s. So I reluctantly tried a pair of 855s. I don’t think I ran more than 30 miles in them. I hated them. So I set off for college with some worn-out 854s and the school-supplied Nikes that are not made for people with feet like mine. My coach was really good about trying to find Nikes that would work for me, but it never happened. The shoes weren’t the biggest factor in my subsequent shin and foot problems, but I’m still angry that the 855s were so awful.

It was going to be a new start when my mom sent me a pair of 856s the spring of my freshman year. They were a huge improvement, so far my favorite of the whole line. And it wasn’t the miracle I’d hoped for, but that’s what I’ve been running in the past few years as running has become fun again. I guess they had an 857 somewhere in there; I never had a pair. So the 858s are scary. I tried them on this morning, but chickened out about going running in them. They feel vaguely like the best pair of Nikes I ever found, and not enough like the 856s. I’ll see how it goes.