They mostly aren’t yellow: they’re white, with blue accents and yellow soles.
But since I bought them on clearance at Dick’s two years ago, I’ve thought of them as my yellow running shoes. That was also their designation in my Map My Run account: yellow Brooks GTS 15.

I’m pretty careful about rotating my running shoes, so at any given time I have at least two, and sometimes four, pairs I run in. I think this helps your shoes to last longer, and plus, it’s sort of fun to have more than one color to choose from. I got the yellow ones for a great price, the same day I bought my GTS 16s (my aqua shoes) which I think were marked $20 off accidentally, but whatever. Because they automatically felt older, as they were the previous year’s model, I also wore the yellow running shoes for other things.

I wore them when Kaleb and I went to Cedar Point amusement park to celebrate his eleventh birthday.

(It was just the two of us so all I have is selfies…you’ll have to take my word that my yellow shoes are on my feet!)

And, on that same trip, I wore them to run four beautiful miles at Niagara Falls.
(I hadn’t yet perfected—or even attempted very often—the running selfie so, alas: no running photos of my Niagara Falls run.)

I wore them on three trips to Lagoon (another amusement park) with my family.

I wore them on walks with Kendell in the canyon, during which we’d talk about a million different subjects. Sometimes we figured things out, sometimes we didn’t, but it was always good to spend time together, walking.

I took them to Hawaii with me, so all of my runs on the island were in them. (Is it weird that I want to go back to Hawaii partly because I want to run there more?)

And the hiking we did in Volcanoes National Park.

I took them to California with me last summer, where I ran on a beautiful trail right on the beach.

I wore them for 567 miles of running. Snowy runs, rainy runs, many, many hot Utah runs.

My yellow shoes have been great companions for many adventures. But the tell-tale sign has started popping up: I can’t run in them anymore, because when I do they give me bunion blisters. Yesterday, after my first long run in my training for the San Francisco marathon, I pulled them off when I got home and discovered two enormous bloody blisters, and I had to admit defeat:

It was the last run of my yellow shoes.

I think it was a good run to end on. A little bit more than six miles on the Provo River Trail. For the first five miles, I had the trail completely to myself. Just me and the cold wind in the still-naked trees, the quick splashing of the river next to me, the bright sun. When I was almost at two miles, I came around a curve in the trail to a shady spot; a rabbit was racing across the trail into the bushes next to it, followed by some kind of hawk. The hawk dove into the bushes but came up empty, its breakfast escaped. Then, as if it were mad at me for interrupting its hunt, it swooped down close to my head. So close I could hear its wings and see the mottled markings on its tail feathers when it flew away. I didn’t even panic, but just felt like a part of nature for a moment.

(I know this is kind of goofy...but I love this sort of running selfie. Me running right out of the frame. It captures the action!)

I run on the river trail quite often, but it’s so well-loved by our community that there aren’t many chances for wildlife encounters. So to experience that little bit of nature, red in tooth and claw, felt like a blessing. A benediction on my well-loved yellow running shoes, which will now be constricted to finish out their days of usefulness as gardening shoes.

My next pair of new running shoes, which I bought on a Black Friday blowout in November, are pink. PINK! Sad as I am to retire my yellow shoes, I’m excited to start running in pink shoes. What unknown-as-yet adventures will they take me on?