Being on the feet for so many days in the desert heat invariably leads to swelling which in turn can lead to serious foot battering.
Hence the old lore that MdS competitors should consider taking a pair of shoes which are larger than normal, which leads to the inevitable question: how much larger?
The official MdS guidance bizarrely suggests two sizes larger than normal but most accounts suggest this is crazy: going too large simply means the foot has a lot more room to slosh about in the shoe, which then causes the serious foot blistering that's sought to be avoided.
Being a normal size 10 I ordered in to my local running shop a wider fitting size 10.5 and size 11 (I've decided to go with the very comfortable Asics Gel Nimbus road shoe rather than a less cushioned trail shoe). Stupidly I forgot to go for my shop test with my orthotics!
Still, with the standard insoles in place and two pairs of socks it was obvious the size 10.5 isn't going to work after a couple of days of MdS swelling and/or bandaging of cuts and blisters.
So I've gone for a full size bigger than normal. This feels odd because there is so much room in the toe box of the shoe. I now plan to break in these new size 11s with the following combination in the shoe:
- the standard insoles,
- together with my orthotics,
- one pair of Injinji toe socks, and
- one pair of Thorlos running socks.
With this combination filling out some of the space in the shoe I'll then have a variety of possibilities during the MdS for stripping out some of these dependent on how bad any swelling or foot damage gets.
