After a lifetime of foot pain, a few years a snowboard boot tech in Bear Valley CA of all places explained to me how my feet are actually shaped and why I was buying the completely wrong shoes basically my whole life.
Learning that I need not just a Wide, but a 3E width shoe (on the right, my left foot is noticeably smaller and narrower) has made a night and day difference. The problem now is that I'm almost completely shut out of buying shoes in person, the number of retail stores that carry anything but "average' width shoes is near zero - even including outdoors and sports stores. It's not much better online, most brands only make a single width and I often end up on the "I've got diabetes and don't care what my shoes look like as long as they have velcro straps" websites after a couple levels of googling. It's impossible on most websites to even specify width when doing searches.
And don't get me started on technical shoes... the number of clipless bike shoes or trail running shoes that come in non-standard widths is surprisingly low. I've got $1000 of Amazon orders in various stages of shipping to me right now, hoping that I'll get 1 pair that fits right and can return the other 8 or so.
First world problems, I know
Learning that I need not just a Wide, but a 3E width shoe (on the right, my left foot is noticeably smaller and narrower) has made a night and day difference. The problem now is that I'm almost completely shut out of buying shoes in person, the number of retail stores that carry anything but "average' width shoes is near zero - even including outdoors and sports stores. It's not much better online, most brands only make a single width and I often end up on the "I've got diabetes and don't care what my shoes look like as long as they have velcro straps" websites after a couple levels of googling. It's impossible on most websites to even specify width when doing searches.
And don't get me started on technical shoes... the number of clipless bike shoes or trail running shoes that come in non-standard widths is surprisingly low. I've got $1000 of Amazon orders in various stages of shipping to me right now, hoping that I'll get 1 pair that fits right and can return the other 8 or so.
First world problems, I know