Flashes of Panic

As I get older and slow down, sometimes how I race becomes more important than how fast. I may have bought my spikes at a dramatic discount at a liquidation sale, but I’ve come to treat the little rituals surrounding them with a reverence all out of proportion to their actual effect on my racing. My racing gear in the morning light on the kitchen table somehow seems more alive than being at the track itself. This is three-quarters of what I’ll wear when I’m racing: socks, spikes, singlet. The missing piece is a pair of black shorts, which I was wearing when I took the photo.

My first spikes were cross country spikes, with the sockets and a flexible plate hidden under a full-length rubber outsole. Since then, I’ve had middle-distance spikes like these, with a nominal heel pad and a fully exposed spike plate like this. I don’t remember which of my coaches taught me how to take proper care of a pair of spikes, but I learned that the way to keep the spike elements from fusing—sticking in the sockets forever—was to put a dab of petroleum jelly in the socket before screwing in the elements, and to always take the spikes out after use, rather than leaving them in until circumstances dictated a new set of elements. I’ve followed that practice religiously since wedging two elements in an older pair of spikes.

The elements, for the most part, are made to be light, not hard; they’re remarkably soft metal, and they’re easy to strip if you’re not careful with the wrench, or if they get cross-threaded. (The fact that they’re soft also drives their frequent replacement, of course; they dull easily.) The two that got wedged were so stripped the spike wrench couldn’t grab them at all. I wound up using a bastard file to create new, flat edges on the elements which I grabbed with vise-grip pliers to remove them.

I keep my used-but-not-used-up spikes in a tin; you can see the half-inchers I use for cross country (I wouldn’t mind some sharper ones, but I need more races to justify that,) and a bag of new quarter-inchers for track. I broke out new ones for Sunday; those are the twelve in the lid of the tin, waiting to be screwed in.

The spike goes in with fingers first, to make sure it’s not cross-threaded. Your fingers feel resistance before the wrench will. Then you use the wrench to give it the last half-turn, to make it truly tight rather than just finger-tight. Six of these in each shoe are teeth on the track, the nails pushing back against the rubber (and pushing me forward) until the last millisecond of my stride, with no slip. It’s a little difference, a few ounces less upper, a bit more grip on the toes, but when they first go on it’s like wings on my feet. If you look closely, you can see red dust from the track on the spike plate, left over from my December race at BU. If you looked over the shoes closely, you’d find mud from the cross country race last fall. Maybe it’s less to do with how much they contribute to my racing, and more to do with how many memories they’re part of.

Now Playing: Bullet Proof from Gotta Get Over Greta by The Nields

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