Thanks LLBean!

For the past 4 winters I had a great pair of red winter boots I bought on sale from LLBean. They had this weird wire lacing system that you wound up to tighten them, which meant they were really easy to put on and take off. But this winter they had finally stopped being waterproof, and then the lace system snapped. I found a similar pair on the LLBean website and ordered them, but I also called them to see if they could send me a new wire lace so I could still use the old ones… turns out they don’t have replacements for the laces, but as they say their stuff is “guaranteed to last” they had me send them back to them (on their dime) and sent me a gift card for the price I originally paid for them!

Fast forward to now as the weather has been getting warmer and I’ve gone back to wearing my old, favourite Converse Chucks- but I have started noticing a sharp pain in my left heel, particularly first thing in the morning or after sitting for a while. Jackie (who has long suffered from plantar fasciitis) immediately realized that this coincided with my return to loose, slip-on sneakers with little or no support and so I decided that I had to get better shoes and unfortunately retire my old, mis-matched Chucks 🙁

My new winter boots (already well used) in front, and 2 new pairs of new LLBean shoes behind

But thanks to my LLBean gift card from my old boots and the $10 coupon I got for buying the new ones I was able to get 2 new pairs of sneakers from the sale section of their website for a total outlay of about $15! They both have much better support as they are lace-ups, and they both have serious arch support. The blue ones are nice, simple canvas shoes for everyday wear, and the red ones are lightweight hiking shoes which I will use for warm weather dog walking. So hopefully LLBean has helped to solve my foot pain for next to nothing 🙂