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Lace Up Your Shoes Essay

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Quick! Look at your shoes. If your shoes have laces, they might be tied wrong. In fact, about 50% of Americans tie their shoes the wrong way, that is, they use the wrong knot when tying their shoes. If your laces come undone, or your bows are twisted, or you double knot your shoes to prevent them from coming untied, then chances are, you tie your shoes the wrong way.
About two years ago I took up running. I loved my new sport and entered several running events and races mostly 5K’s. Six months into my new hobby, I decided I was a “real runner” and because I was a “real runner,” I needed to subscribe to a real running magazine. It’s a well-known fact that every diehard runner has to subscribe to a running magazine of some sort. …show more content…

First you were shown how to take one lace and pass it under the other.” After reading this, it dawned on me that most of us

were taught how to tie our shoes when we were four or five years old. Our parents or siblings taught us, but didn’t necessarily teach us to do it right. If you tie your shoes wrong, don’t worry. It only takes a minor tweak to tie the right knot – a “Reef Knot.” All shoelace knots start the same; laces crossed over-under, and then finish with a bow. However, if you finish the bow in the same direction that you crossed the laces, you will end up with a “Granny Knot.” A Granny Knot has an unbalanced bow, e.g., the bow is turned at 45 to 90 degrees and sometimes it’s perfectly inline with the shoe (see illustration below). Granny Knots usually come untied. People that tie granny knots, “granny knotters” are the people you see in line at the grocery store tying their shoes. They are the people whose shoes come untied at the most inopportune time, like the base runner rounding third base heading for home plate in the World Series, or the marathon runner who has to stop to tie his shoes in the middle of the race. Granny knotters tie double knots to prevent their shoes from coming untied. This works until its time to untie the knot, and we all know how hard it can be to untie a double knot, especially with cold hands.

The other 50% are the people who tie their shoes the right way using a

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