On a snowy December day, more than a decade ago, my then 1-year-old daughter and I headed out for a jog shortly before her afternoon nap. She was bundled up in a The North Face snowsuit and a fleece blanket, cozy inside a stroller Workouts to Help You Qualify for Boston A Part of Hearst Digital Media.
Half Marathon Training.
I only noticed the airless tire when we crossed a freshly plowed intersection, but I pushed ahead for the final mile to our home. A driver of a car that weighed a couple of tons wouldn’t have such fortune in those less-than-ideal conditions, having to pull to the side of the road and kneel in the cold powder to put on the spare, or call for roadside assistance. Thankfully, we cruised smoothly along sidewalks still covered with three to four inches of snow.
Since then, I’ve been on the hunt for things that are shiny—and pointy—when I’m out for a run. Some runners take pride in collecting coins, saving them up in a jar to count the windfall at the end of each year. Others head out to pluck cigarette butts and Twisted Tea cans while exercising. I can see the pleasure in both of those undertakings. I don’t keep these rusty old fasteners, and I take no pride in knowing just how many I’ve removed from the streets over the years. I just want them gone. So, I soft-paw the finds until I spot a safe place to ditch them, where they won’t end up in the street again.
Part of this strange obsession may be that my running habits lead me to encounter more nails than nickels. That’s because I usually run out on the street. One wise old runner once told me that sidewalks are the most dangerous place for a runner. Lose focus and catch a toe on a tiny crack, and you’ll find yourself with skinned knees and wounded pride. Luckily in Easton, Pennsylvania, where I live, I can run on the pavement relatively safely—and spot more nails and screws.
It may sound like I’m wasting my time, but shortly after running sub-3 hours at the 2022 Harrisburg Marathon, my buddy Mike and I jumped into my Mazda CX-5 only to find that I had a flat tire. The last thing I wanted to do at that moment was to get down on my knees and risk a crippling hamstring cramp, but I wasn’t about to call for roadside assistance or limp more than 100 miles home on the spare donut. So I decided to fix it myself with a plug kit. Friends, I won’t lie, it was a struggle; I barely had enough strength left to lift the wheel, let alone wrestle in the gooey, glue-coated plug. The entry in my training log from that day reads: “Patching the tire may have been harder than the marathon itself.”
I dropped Mike off at his house and, a few miles later, the tire pressure warning light came on again—I had picked up another nail. In the same exact tire. Defeated, I let the tire shop down the street deal with it the next day.
The Fastest Shoes at the 2025 Boston Marathon running routes to go past house renovations and construction sites. I always hit the jackpot at new roof installations. (Note: Avoid driving past a house that’s having its shingles torn off.) While running anything other than a timed workout, I slam on my brakes to pick up any nails and screws I find. I like to think I’m doing good in clearing the streets of things that can puncture a car tire—and hopefully bringing myself some good karma.
I haven’t had a flat tire since, so maybe it’s working?
RW+ Membership Benefits Runner’s World and the director of product testing. He has tested and reviewed running shoes, GPS watches, headphones, apparel, and more for nearly two decades. He regularly tests more than 100 pairs of shoes each year, and once had a 257-day streak running in different models. Jeff can usually be found on the roads, racing anything from the mile to a marathon, but he also enjoys racing up mountains and on snowshoes. When he’s not running, you’ll probably find him hanging from a ladder making repairs and renovations to his house (he’s also director of product testing for Popular Mechanics).
