I've been saying for a million years that I will, one day in life, run a marathon. (Not win a marathon, not even TRY to win one, but just complete one. And if it takes me more than 4 hours so be it.)

I'm not getting any younger, and I noticed one of the excuses (I wish I could find a way to make money as a maker of excuses, because I sooooo excel at coming up with excuses) is that I can't get shoes that fit properly because my left foot is fully one half-size smaller than my right one. This is fine for every day walking, but if you are meant to be running like seriously, it is an problem; a fairly serious one.

The running shoes are touted as being "precision engineered" (with all the silly computer graphics in the commercials) to give your feets the support where and when they need it. And the shoes are not inexpensive. And the salesfolk always tell me, "then put an extra sock over your left foot." Really? This is going to _equal_ the precision engineering that's a proper fit for my right foot? And which engineering is reflected in (or cited as an excuse for) the shoes' price?

I read somewhere that some shoe company is aware of the fact that this unevenly-sized-feet problem is not that uncommon; I've heard it afflicts 1 in 3 people. (Which, alone, makes me wonder about people with 3 feet. Surely that's got to be less common but I bet it still happens. Who's looking out for them in the footwear world?!?)

I've posted about this on a coupla runners'/fitness forums but they all give me the same "extra socks" shpiel (yes I am aware of the song from An Chorus Line).

Does anyone know of a decent shoe company, or maybe some third-party distributor, that has a service by which folk can buy split-sized pairs o' shoes?

I want to do this maramathon thing before I'm 40. It'll be here before I know it.