I’ve been told there are a few special readers of this blog who are far more interested in posts about running shoes than journalism. This goes out to you.

Nick has been needing new running shoes. So after we went running around a little lake in Seattle, we stopped by Super Jock ‘n Jill to get him a new pair. While he was out doing the “just run down the street to see which feels better” part of acquiring new shoes, I chatted with the youngish sales guy helping us. From talking about my still-fairly-clean 858s, it came up what kind of running I’m doing these days.

I told him it’s mostly just casual now, trying to get back in shape, that running 80 to 100 miles a week took a pretty hard toll in a series of injuries once I hit college.

“That’s kind of like my wife,” he said. “She ran at UW for a while, but she used to run 80 or so in high school.”

At this point I had the defensive pride instinct about other girls who ran high mileage in high school. But then he told me her 3,200 PR in high school was 10:11 and my eyebrows went sky-high.

You see, as I explained to Nick when he returned, each year there’s a small set of high school girls in the nation who run the 3,200 in about 10:30. Maybe a dozen or so. That was me at my best. Then there are the girls who we can do nothing but gape at while they run times closer to 10 minutes.

It turns out his wife is Alison Tubbs, a name I definitely remember from my early days caring about such things. She’s two years older than me.

I don’t really miss those days. But after living in Nick’s crew world for most of the weekend, it was like stumbling into an old home.