I don't want soft feet. Why is everything in the foot aisle trying to give me them?

The Solen Base Journal

Peels, files, acids, "baby soft in seven days". For a runner, soft is the problem. Here's what I actually wanted instead.

By Haider Jafri, founder · 5 minute read

A dramatised story. The routine, the objects and the quotes come from real posts and reviews we read while making Solen Base, and the people quoted were writing about other products, not ours. The narrator is a composite, not a customer.

I only went in for plasters.

But I had twenty minutes before the train, and the edge on my left heel had been bothering me all week, so I wandered down the foot care aisle for the first time in my life and actually read the boxes.

Baby soft. Silky smooth. Remove hard skin in seven days. A peel that makes your feet shed like a snake. An electric file with a picture of a woman's foot on it.

Every single thing on that shelf was trying to get rid of the thing I've spent two years building.

The hard skin is kit

If you don't run, this sounds mad. So let me explain.

The skin on my heels is hard for a reason. Months of miles built it. The way I understand it, and the way every running forum I've read puts it, it's there for a reason. Take it all off and you're back to the soft skin you had before you started, and soft skin at mile eighteen is how you end up with blisters.

So I don't want it gone. I want to keep it.

What I don't want is for it to go past hard. Rigid. Thick enough that I can feel the edge of it when I press my thumb in. That's when it starts to catch. And that's when, in my experience, it splits.

Pliable, not soft

That's the whole thing, really. I've started putting it this way:

I don't want soft. I want pliable.

Tough enough to take the miles. Not so dry and rigid that it cracks.

And once you see it like that, you can go down that aisle and cross things off.

The peel. Takes the whole lot off. Hard pass.
The electric file. Fine for taking the edge off now and then, carefully. Go too far and I've undone months of work in five minutes.
The acid creams. Designed to break the hard skin down. Not what I'm after.

What's left? The boring stuff. Keeping it moisturised, so it doesn't dry out and go rigid. The jar of Vaseline in my basket.

The problem with the boring stuff

I've always known the jar was the answer. So why didn't I use it more?

Because doing it properly meant ruining a pair of socks every time. Vaseline on, then a sacrificial pair from the back of the drawer, because it never washes out of the good ones. Greasy sheets. That smell. Or cling film, crinkling in bed like a packed lunch.

"I have a few pairs of socks that are my 'sacrificial socks' to get ruined by the vaseline."

A runner on a forum.

So I did it when I was worried, and not before. Which isn't really maintenance.

Something built for the pliable job

What I needed wasn't in that aisle at all. It wasn't a product that does something to the skin. It was something that let me use the jar I already had, without it costing me a pair of socks every time.

That's what led me to Solen Base.

For Vaseline nights, there's the Night Sleeve. Open at the toes, covers the heel. Cotton on the outside and lined with gel on the inside. The gel side goes against the Vaseline. For rest days around the house, there's the Day Sock, closed toe.

And the bit that sold me:

It doesn't add anything to your skin.
It isn't a cream, a peel or an acid. It won't take hard skin off. It won't make my feet soft. How much I moisturise is still my call, same as now. It just gives the jar somewhere to go that isn't my socks.

Nothing is soaked into the fabric. It goes in the wash at 40 degrees in a mesh bag.

And it's not for running in.
Not on a run, not in running shoes. Overnight and rest days only.

What I want

I want to keep the hard skin I earned, and stop it turning on me in week nine.

I want to use the one thing in that aisle that was ever meant for me, the jar, without ruining a pair of socks each time.

And I never want to read the words "baby soft" again.

If you've ever stood in that aisle and put everything back, have a look at how the overnight kit works. There's a fourteen night guarantee.