to the banks of the ob river

I'm finally bidding a fond farewell to these much loved trainers, in which I've been running for the past seven years. They are now exhausted, heels split and peeling away - but hey they have carried me over a lot of ground in all weathers.

A conservative estimate of distance traveled in these shoes since the summer of 2011 is completely astonishing to me: it works out at 3,500 miles plus.

In other words, traveling in a straight line from London, in that time these shoes would have taken me to (for example) the Democratic Republic of Congo, or South Sudan, or Ethiopia; to SE Iran, or Afghanistan, or central Kazakhstan, or to the banks of the Ob River in Novosibirsk, Siberia; as the crow flies, dammit, these shoes have been as far as New Jersey. 

Another two pairs, and another 14 years, and we'll get to Sydney ...

Thanks, co-travelers, you've been brilliant.