Why every runner I know can recite the superglue method

The Solen Base Journal

Clean it, glue it, pinch for thirty. I learned it on a forum at eleven at night in week nine. This isn't about whether it works. It's about why we end up needing it.

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.

It was a Wednesday in week nine. I felt my heel go at four miles into an easy run. That little give, then a sting every time I landed.

I finished the run, because of course I did. Taped it that night. And at eleven, in bed, I did what every runner does. I searched it.

The method

It's the same on every forum. Word for word, almost.

"Thoroughly clean the crack and surrounding area, apply superglue and pinch together for 30 sec. Keep running without pain!"

I read it three times. Then I read the replies. Hundreds of them. People swearing by it, people saying which brand, people saying how long it holds.

I'm not going to tell you whether to do it. I'm not a podiatrist and neither is anyone on that forum. If skin has actually split, that's a podiatrist's job, and I wish I'd treated it that way sooner.

What I want to talk about is why so many of us know that method off by heart.

The windowsill

The next morning I was brushing my teeth and looked at the windowsill in our bathroom.

Superglue. Zinc oxide tape. Blister plasters. A jar of Vaseline.

It's my foot kit. It's been building up there for years. And I noticed, for the first time, that almost everything on it is for after. After the blister. After the split. After the heel has already gone.

It's a repair kit.

Repair kit, maintenance kit

Everything else in my running is maintenance. Strength work, so I don't get injured. Easy days, so I recover. New shoes every few hundred miles, before they go, not after. Sleep. Fuel. I plan it all.

My feet were the only thing I only dealt with once they'd already broken.

The one maintenance item on that windowsill was the jar of Vaseline. And it was the one thing I kept skipping, because doing it properly meant ruining a pair of socks. I've got a drawer of sacrificial socks at the back of the wardrobe to prove it.

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

A runner on a forum.

So the maintenance half of my foot kit was the half with a cost attached, every time. No wonder the repair half kept getting used.

Making maintenance cost nothing

That was the thing I actually needed to change. Not the jar. Not how much Vaseline. The fact that every Vaseline night cost me a pair of socks, a greasy bed and a trail on the floor.

That's what led me to Solen Base.

For Vaseline nights, there's the Night Sleeve. It's open at the toes and covers the heel. Cotton on the outside and lined with gel on the inside. The gel side goes against the Vaseline. You use whatever you use now. Nothing is soaked into the fabric, and it goes in the wash at 40 degrees in a mesh bag.

For rest days around the house, there's the Day Sock, closed toe, same idea.

It's not for running in.
Not on a run, not in running shoes. It's the other hours.

What I want

I want the windowsill to be mostly maintenance. I want Vaseline night to cost me nothing, so I actually do it. And I'd like to go a whole block without looking up the superglue method again.

If you can recite it too, have a look at how the overnight kit works. There's a fourteen night guarantee.