​​​​​​​The First Shoe I Really Loved

The New Balance 1400 v3.

- Heather Mayer Irvine

“WHAT’S THE ‘Z’ FOR?” I ASKED MY GRAN, LOOKING AT THE LARGE WHITE LETTER SEWN ONTO THE WIDE GREY SHOE.

“It’s an ‘N’ – for ‘New Balance’,” my grandmother responded.

My grandmother wore no other type of shoe that I can recall. My mom once told me that was because New Balance was the only brand that made shoes in double-E, to accommodate Gran’s wide feet. That may have been the case. But I wager that it was also because the shoes were no-nonsense, comfortable, functional. Gran didn’t have time for bullshit. (Like her, neither do I.)

A couple of times a year, Gran would go to the New Balance factory shop to load up on her double-E grey shoes, with an ‘N’, not a ‘Z’. On one of these pilgrimages, she took me with her. I can’t remember if I needed new shoes or just wanted them. When it comes to grandparents, it doesn’t really matter. They’ll spoil you either way.

We walked in, and there were rows and rows of tall metal filing cabinets filled with shoes. Gran let me pick out whatever my tomboy-self wanted: grey shoes with a rough texture; yellow and black laces; black, ridged soles – which, thinking back on it now, meant it must have been some sort of trail shoe – and a big black ‘N’.

To my 10-year-old self, wearing a shoe like Gran’s echoed all the other similarities we shared: we were hard workers with a neversay-die attitude, loyal and active.

And though on that initial shopping trip I could never have known it, just like Gran I would become a life-long New Balance user.

I DIDN’T ALWAYS like running. That may seem hard to believe, because I’m now an editor at