Is there any particular reason why the makers of athletic shoes need to put such ridiculously long laces on their shoes? This has been a problem with probably the last 10-15 pairs of shoes I’ve bought.
I’m getting very tired of buying low-top shoes that come with laces that seem like they’re intended for high-top basketball shoes! Unless I want to keep stepping on my laces, I’m forced to double- or even triple-knot them! The long laces are especially annoying because I ride a bike a lot. Unless I knot them multiple times, I get my laces caught in my chain. No fun, especially at high speeds.
So is there a legitimate, logical reason for this practice, or are the shoe companies simply catering to the teenage fashion of walking around with their shoes untied?
One possibility is that the makers have found a way to simplify their purchases. If you only have to buy one length of lace you make things simpler and probably earn the MBA who thought of it a bonus.
Funny, I’ve found them too short for sports lacing and double knotting. I also believe that one manufacturer makes the same length for all of its laces for all of its kinds of shoes.
Sports lacing, in case you don’t know is as follows, and this is particularly true of running shoes. If you look at the top eyelets of a pair of running shoes, you will find that they are set back more than the others. These are for sports lacing, but you can do it even if those eyelets are not set back. Instead of crossing the laces at the top eyelets, you place the lace exiting from the penultimate eyelet into the one immediately above it. You do this on both sides. Then you can grab the ends and make the laces as firm as you like without tightening them too much on your tongue, thereby irritating your instep. After you make them as firm as you like, you can then proceed to double tie them. The problem is that the laces are usually not long enough to do both.