This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. The NFL playoffs are here, and it all starts with Wild Card Weekend powered by Verizon. Man, it all comes down to this. 12 teams, six games, three days, and one epic weekend.
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This is Vali De Blukia from A Really Good Cry. I absolutely love being outdoors, even if it's just stepping outside for a bit of fresh air between meals or taking a mindful walk to clear my head. But the one thing that can really ruin that is when my feet feel cramped in my shoes.
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It's like my feet can finally do their job. Using all those little muscles that make me feel stronger the more I move. Whether you're a marathon runner, beginner, or advanced, or just getting outside to train, ultras have become my go-to for running and moving mindfully. They fit so well, they're so comfortable, and they just move with you. Shop now at ultrarunning.com.
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Go to the iHeartRadio app. or wherever you get your podcasts. Carol Ford is often overlooked as a president. He was in the 38th.
However, Gerald Ford made an incredible impact on civil rights during his time in Congress. and as president. and all because of his friendship. with a man named Willis Ward. Buddy Morehouse tells the story of Gerald Ford.
Willis Ward, and a football game which forever changed. Both men's lives. Gerald Ford and Willis Ward in the early 1930s were two of the best high school football players in the state of Michigan. Gerald Ford was going to Grand Rapids South High School and Willis Ward was attending Detroit Northwestern High School.
So they were on opposite sides of the state. But they were two of the best high school football players in the state.
So in the fall of 1931, they both came to the University of Michigan. They met actually on their very first day of freshman orientation. It was held in Waterman Gymnasium on the Michigan campus. And they met that first day and they had known of each other by reputation because they had read the newspaper clippings and knew how good the other guy was.
So immediately they introduced themselves to each other and really became great friends from that very first day at the University of Michigan in the fall of 1931. They realized they had a lot in common beyond just football. They both had an interest in the law. They kind of had similar career goals.
So they just, they became fast friends in college and decided that they were going to room together when they went on road trips. They had formed this friendship that was outside of football and then it just kind of got strengthened on the football field. And then every time they went, Michigan football team would go on a road trip. The two of them would room together. And then they basically, you know, remained great friends, obviously, throughout college and then through the rest of their lives as well.
The athletic director at the time was a guy named Fielding Yost, who had been Michigan's football coach for 25 years, starting in the early 1900s. And he became really one of the greatest college football coaches of all time, certainly one of the most influential coaches of all time. But in 1925, he stepped down from being a coach and he became the athletic director. And then he burned through a couple coaches after that. And he eventually hired a guy named Harry Kipke to be his head coach.
And Harry Kipke had been an all-American football player for him. He was one of the greatest athletes that Michigan ever had. And when Harry Kipke became the coach, he wanted to kind of beef up the roster, beef up recruiting. And everybody at that time knew about Willis Ward. He was this phenomenal athlete, not just in football, but especially in track.
In Detroit. He was one of the fastest people in the country. He knew he was an incredible athlete, and he really wanted him to come to Michigan, not just to run track, but also to play football. The problem with that is that Fielding Yost was dead set against having any African-American football player on the football team. He didn't mind if there were African Americans on other teams.
There were some that played on the baseball team. But the football team was kind of his baby. And Fielding Yost was a fairly unrelenting racist. He'd grown up in West Virginia. He was the son of a Confederate soldier.
And he was really dead set on keeping his football team all white.
So when Harry Kipke came to him and said that he wanted to recruit Willis Ward to play on his team, it caused a huge rift between the two of them. Yost was against it. Kipke really wanted it. There were even some rumors that the two of them actually came to blows when they were discussing whether or not Willis Ward would be allowed to join the team. But eventually, Kipke won out.
And Yost backed down and Willis. Ward was able to join the team. And then Willis Ward, when he joined the team, he became the first African-American football player in about 40 years to play at the University of Michigan. The way things work back in college football back then, the schedules were not set many years in advance. They were really only set like a year or so in advance, only today.
You know, right now Michigan knows five years from now who they're going to be playing. But back in those days, they set the schedule like the year before. And Michigan had always only ever played teams from the north. Teams from either the Midwest or maybe the East. They'd never played a team from the South.
For whatever reason, Fielding Yost wanted to get a southern team on the schedule. His brother-in-law was a guy named Dan McGugan, who had worked in, he'd been an athlete at Michigan, and then he was working at Vanderbilt in Tennessee at the time. And Dan McGugan was really good friends with the people at Georgia Tech.
So Yost worked through Dan McGugan to contact the people at Georgia Tech in 1933. He started contacting them to see if they would be interested in coming up to Ann Arbor to play a game in 1934.
So Yost and the people at Georgia Tech started trading telegrams back then saying, Would you be interested in coming up to play? Um a football game. that season.
Now, Yost knew very well that the policy, the Jim Crow policy among the southern states at that time, was that they would refuse to play against any team that had an African-American player.
So when he scheduled the Georgia Tech game, he knew for a fact that. Georgia Tech was going to refuse to play the game if Willis Ward played.
So he knew it was going to be a problem, but he still went ahead and scheduled the game.
So in 1933, he scheduled this game. And once everybody started to get the news that this was coming out, they quickly started to realize that, you know, oh boy, we're going to have a problem. because they're not going to play the game if we have Willis Ward on our team. And it didn't really become an issue until 1934. When the schedule was officially announced, and then everybody started asking, Yoast.
What are you going to do? Are you going to bench Willis Ward for this game? Are you going to play it? Or what are you going to do? Uh And you've been listening to Buddy Morehouse, who happens to teach at Hillsdale College.
And it is also a documentarian who made a documentary on this very story. And by the way, this goes to show that racism was not a southern phenomenon, but a national one, and a national plague, an athletic director at a top Big Ten school, and it probably wasn't the Big Ten then. Was vehemently against having an African-American athlete and a terrific one play on his team for no other reason. and he was black. when we come back more of this remarkable story, a love story of the sorts.
Here on Our American Story. Lee Habib here, and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed or want to hear again can be found there daily. Again, Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps us keep these great American stories coming.
This is Rob Gronkowski from Dudes on Dudes with Gronk and Jules. Sunday mornings are sacred. I've got my game day routine. Coffee, jersey laid out, and my lucky playlist. But the real game changer.
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Man, it all comes down to this. 12 teams, 6 games, 3 days, and 1 epic weekend. My goodness! It's win or go home, and every moment counts on the road to Super Bowl 60. It's a touchdown!
Wildcard weekend powered by Verizon, January 10th through 12th. Visit watch.nfl.com for the full schedule. This is Radi Devlukia from A Really Good Cry. I absolutely love being outdoors, even if it's just stepping outside for a bit of fresh air between meals or taking a mindful walk to clear my head. But the one thing that can really ruin that is when my feet feel cramped in my shoes.
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It's like my feet can finally do their job. Using all those little muscles that make me feel stronger the more I move. Whether you're a marathon runner, beginner, or advanced, or just getting outside to train, ultras have become my go-to for running and moving mindfully. They fit so well, they're so comfortable, and they just move with you. Shop now at ultrarunning.com.
That's A-L-T-R-A-Running.com. Experience Ultra and stay out there.
And we return to our American stories. We were just listening to the story of Gerald Ford and Willis Ward becoming fast friends at the University of Michigan. By the way, when two guys decide to room on the road, this is more than a friendship. We rejoin events as word spreads of the approaching Michigan-Georgia Tech football game and the crisis. or impending crisis.
of Will Willis Ward Ebench. Buddy Morehouse continued. That's a story. The way it worked back in college football then is that freshmen weren't allowed to play in the varsity.
So Willis Ward and Gerald Ford couldn't play at all when they were freshmen. They were just on the practice squad. When they were sophomores, they were able to play. And because Willis Ward was pretty much the, he was definitely the fastest player on the team and one of the best players on the team, he moved into the starting lineup right away. He was one of the best players starting when he was a sophomore.
And Michigan won the national championship both his sophomore and junior years.
So Willis Ward is one of the best players on the best team in the country. Gerald Ford was backing, he played center and linebacker, and he was backing up a guy named Chuck Bernard, who was an all-American center.
So Gerald Ford didn't play much at all when he was a sophomore and junior. But when he was a senior, Chuck Bernard was graduating.
So for the first time, both of the... these guys that these best friends Gerald Ford and Willis Gord were both going to be moving into the starting lineup. And they were so excited heading into that season, going into the 1934 season, because they were both going to be starters for the first time. They were coming off two national championships, and the excitement was just sky high. But all that kind of came crashing down in starting in the The late summer and then the early fall of 1934, when this Georgia Tech situation came up, and everybody started asking them, you know, what.
just started asking oh Fielding Yost and Harry Kipke. You know, what are you going to do about this game? You know, Georgia Tech is not going to play the game if. Willis Ward plays in the game. What are you going to do about it?
And it caused this incredibly. contentious situation once word got out, both on the team and in the Michigan community and then really nationally. And it became a firestorm in the Michigan campus. College football back then didn't start in late August or early September like it does now. The games didn't start until early October.
That was when the first game of the season was. The Georgia Tech game was going to be the third game of the season. and it wasn't until uh October 20th that the game was played.
So This really started to explode in late September and early October of 1934. And when word got out, when Georgia Tech said, no, we're not going to play the game if Willis Ward plays, Fielding Yost wouldn't say anything publicly. He would not come out and say it publicly. He was definitely speaking in the meetings that they had, but he wouldn't say anything, wouldn't make any press announcements, wouldn't answer any of their questions about it. Leading up to the game, as I said, it was creating this firestorm on the campus and there were really two sides that were forming.
On the one side, you had most all of the faculty and almost all the students at Michigan who were saying, there's no way that we should play this game if Willis Ward's not allowed to play. Either he plays the game or we cancel it, but we should not play the game and bench Willis Ward. That's just not an option. On the other side were some of the The more blue bloods, some of the fraternity boys on Michigan's campus who were taking the approach that. You know what?
These are our guests from the South. We need to be considerate of what their feelings are, and we need to. give in and bench will a sport because that's what they want us to do and they're our guests.
So created a huge rift on the Michigan campus. The night before the game, there was this huge rally that had about 1,500 or 2,000 people attending it, where it was, everybody came to the microphone and they were giving angry speeches on both sides of it. There were also hundreds of telegrams that were received by the Michigan Athletic Office, most all of them saying that it's a disgrace that a school like Michigan would even be thinking of benching Willis Ward. in a situation like this. and demanding that they they cancel the game if they're insisting that Willis Ward be benched.
Really, the people in the middle of this were not only Willis Ward, but also Gerald Ford. He was for the first time in his life, as I said, a starter on the Michigan football team. But he was watching what was happening to his best friend.
So Gerald Ford felt so strongly about it that he actually wrote to his father. and then got the word to Harry Kipke that he wanted to quit the team. If they were going to Do this to his friend Willis Ward, he didn't want to have any part of that.
So he told his father that he was going to quit the team. And if you think about it, that's an extraordinary thing for a 20-year-old. college kid to be doing. He was living his dream of being a Michigan football player. And on the eve of the.
the only season where he was going to be a star for his senior year, he was willing to quit the team. as a show of support for his best friend Willis Ward. That's how strongly he felt about it. And that's a test of character that a lot of people don't know about Gerald Ford. that really stayed with him for the rest of his life.
But after he said that, And and they told Willis Ward what he wanted to do. Willis Ward. went to Gerald Ford and he told him, he said, no, I don't want you to quit the team. I want you to play. I want you to go out there to play and I want you to pound them.
So that's what Ford did. He said, if you want me to play, I'll play. If you want me to pound him, I'll pound him. The weather was miserable. It was October 20th.
The weather was, it was cold and rainy. Michigan had started the season terribly, and it was all because of the Willis Ward incident. This was just ripping the team up inside. They just came off two back-to-back national championships, and then they started the 1934 season with two losses.
So coming in the Georgia Tech game, they'd already lost two games. And the morale of the team was destroyed. But They had a special mission, I think, in their hearts for the Georgia Tech game that they needed to go out there and they needed to stand up for their friend, Willis Warden.
So, the game was played in these terrible conditions, but Michigan actually won the game 9-2. Georgia Tech's only points came out of safety. Michigan scored, also scored a safety, and they scored a touchdown in the game. And Gerald Ford had probably. the best game of his uh of his life.
that year. He was absolutely devastating the players on the Georgia Tech team. And the the one play that really illustrates that is there was a A player on the Georgia Tech team, a sophomore named Charlie Preston, who is from Atlanta. And there was trash talk throughout the entire game, but Charlie Preston was just really, really going over the top with it. He was he kept talking about.
Willis Ward in the game and using the worst racial slurs that you can imagine to describe him. And he was directing that at the Michigan players. When Gerald Ford heard that, he snapped. And there was this one play where. Gerald Ford and another player named Bill Borgman.
They. Went after Charlie Preston during that play, and they put the most devastating block on him that ended up. Breaking some of Charlie Preston's ribs. They had to haul him out of the game after that. That's how hard they hit Charlie Preston.
And that got in the newspaper that he'd been knocked out of the game. And on Monday morning after the game, Gerald Ford and Bill Bergman, they came to Willis Ward and they said, that was for you. That ended up being the only game that Michigan won that season. Record-wise, it was the worst season in Michigan history. and it was all because their morale had been totally destroyed because of the Willis Ward situation.
So th th this was not a team that was in uh historically in trouble. They they just came off two had come off two national championship seasons, and then they end up having a uh a one and seven season, which is the worst season in Michigan football history. U And what a story you're hearing about how racism. drove the great University of Michigan championship team.
So tragic and terrible season and all over one single claim. That from an athletic director who deliberately did this. There's almost no question he did just listening to the story. Why schedule a southern team? But for this kind of conflict and showdown, why else would a man do it?
And that's how deep the roots of racism can go in a human being. But what a thing young Gerald Ford did. He doesn't play. If my pal doesn't play, I quit. And his pal says, no, go pound them.
and the one win they have in this tragic season.
Well They pounded Georgia Tech. and broke some ribs while they were at it, on general principle. When we come back, more of this remarkable story. A love story in the end between Gerald Ford and Willis Ward. here.
on our American story. This is Rob Gronkowski from Dudes on Dudes with Gronk and Jules. Sunday mornings are sacred. I've got my game day routine. Coffee, jersey laid out, and my lucky playlist.
But the real game changer. New morning uncrustable sandwiches. I've always loved uncrustable sandwiches, and now I'm all about the new flavors with 12 grams of protein. Bright-eyed Barry, or Up an apple. Bright Eyed Berry's got that flashy, finessey vibe.
Like your favorite slot receiver. Up an apple. Tough and reliable. Like a do-it-all tight end. And players love them.
Did you know teams crush over 80,000 uncrustable sandwiches a year? They know it's good. It's a snack that can go with you anywhere, from the couch to the tailgate or even in the locker room.
Soft bread, yummy fillings, protein-packed. Once it's part of your ritual, you don't skip it. Easy enough for Gronk to grab straight from the freezer. Your new Sunday kickoff ritual starts here with the new morning uncrustable sandwiches. Packed with 12 grams of protein.
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It's win or go home, and every moment counts on the road to Super Bowl 60. It's a touchdown! Wild Card Weekend powered by Verizon, January 10th through 12th. Visit watch.nfl.com for the full schedule. This is Radha Devlukia from A Really Good Cry.
I absolutely love being outdoors, even if it's just stepping outside for a bit of fresh air between meals or taking a mindful walk to clear my head. But the one thing that can really ruin that is when my feet feel cramped in my shoes.
So I switched to ultra running, and honestly, it made such a difference. What I love most is their signature ultra fit comfort balance strength. They have this roomy toe box that lets my toes actually spread and move naturally. And I personally have some wide feet, so I really appreciate that. I feel more grounded and balanced with every single step.
It's like my feet can finally do their job. Using all those little muscles that make me feel stronger the more I move. Whether you're a marathon runner, beginner, or advanced, or just getting outside to train, ultras have become my go-to for running and moving mindfully. They fit so well, they're so comfortable, and they just move with you. Shop now at ultrarunning.com.
That's A-L-T-R-A running.com. Experience Ultra and stay out there.
And we return to our American stories. We were just listening to Buddy Morehouse describe what happened on that fateful day in 1934 when Michigan hounded Georgia Tech in their only win of the season. But what happened to the relationship between Gerald Ford and Willis Ward? Let's pick up where we last left off. That game had a profound impact on both of them in every respect.
What it did to Willis Ward at first was he was, as I said, as great as he was in football, he was even better in track. He was one of the best football players in the country. He was one of the best track people in the entire world. Uh back then the the fastest man in the world was Jesse Owens. who is from Ohio State.
And he's the one who went on and won four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics.
Well, Willis Ward and Jesse Owens were in college at the same time, and Willis Ward raced against Jesse Owens five times, and he actually beat Jesse Owens twice. There are people that don't think Jesse Owens ever lost a race in college or ever lost a race during that time.
Well, one of the only people who ever beat him was Willis Ward.
So You have a Willis Award who is just as fast as Jesse Owens, the fastest man in the world. And going into the 1936 Olympics, everybody was thinking the United States is going to have the greatest track team of all time. We've got Jesse Owens on our team. We've got Willis Ward on our team. We're going to just...
do nothing but but win gold medals. Um but The Olympics that year, of course, were held in Berlin, Adolf Hitler's Berlin. There was a lot of speculation as to what Hitler might do in terms of discriminating against the athletes who were not. Who were not white from other countries.
So Willis Ward had been so devastated by what happened to him in the Georgia Tech situation, then what came to the Olympics, he just said, you know what? I don't want to put myself through. possibly having the same thing happen to me as happened to me with the Georgia Tech game.
So he essentially retired from athletics after the 1935 track season at Michigan. He never ran another race or played in another football game. He decided instead that he was going to um go into the corporate world. He was hired by Henry Ford to work at the Ford Motor Company as. kind of a liaison between the black and white workers.
Henry Ford loved Willis Ward. He absolutely loved Willis Ward. And he was trying to integrate his auto factories at the time and he knew he needed someone to kind of be the go-between.
So when Willis Ward was in his early 20s, he was probably one of the highest ranking African-American business executives in the country working for the Ford Motor Company. Gerald Ford went on to law school at Yale and then became an attorney in Grand Rapids and a few years after that decided to run for Congress. But throughout the entire time, the Willis Warden and Gerald Ford kept in touch with each other, visited each other all the time, saw each other all the time. Ford became a congressman. Willis Ward eventually left Ford Motor Company, went to law school because he wanted to become an attorney, specifically working on civil rights cases.
And then in 1956, Willis Ward decided he was going to run for Congress too. And like Gerald Ford, Willis Ward was also a Republican.
So Willis Ward was going to run for Congress in a seat in Detroit as a Republican, and Gerald Ford came to Detroit and campaigned for his friend after that.
So that was 20 years after their football days at Michigan, and the two of them are walking through Detroit knocking on doors. Together to try to get Willis Ward elected. He ended up not winning that race, not getting elected, but just showed their friendship kind of kept going on after that. When Gerald Ford became one of the leading people in the House of Representatives, He, in the 1960s, when the civil rights legislation was going through the Congress, Ford was one of the main Republican supporters of the civil rights legislation. And he always told people that the thing that was strongest in his mind when he voted in favor of that was what had happened to Willis Ward and how unfair that was.
So when he voted in favor of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, It was the Willis Ward. Story in his friendship with Willis Ward was strongly in his mind. And it continued when he moved into the White House, when Richard Nixon resigned, and then because Ford, of course, would become vice president, when Spear Wagney resigned, and then he became president when Nixon resigned. Um and th that whole His whole friendship and everything with Willis Ward was still um was still one of the driving factors in his mind anytime it came to any Any legislation or anything else that was going on related to race, his relationship with Willis Ward was still there. Gerald Ford was the president who signed Black History Month into law.
And Willis Ward would come to the White House and visit with Jerry at that time. There's some great photos from 1976 of the two of them in the Oval Office just having a private conversation. It had been 40 years since their time in Ann Arbor, and they were together at the White House. And by that time, Willis Ward was a judge in Detroit.
So you have the judge in Detroit and the President of the United States, these two old Michigan football teammates, just having a great conversation in the Oval Office.
So their friendship continued through the rest of their lives and then even after Willis Ward passed away in 1983, it even continued after that. Willis Ford passed away in 1983. Gerald Ford then became kind of an elder statesman in the Republican Party. And one of the most remarkable things that happened is in 1999, the University of Michigan's, they had an affirmative actions policy that was in place, and it had come under fire. was being legally challenged and it went all the way to the Supreme Court.
The president of Michigan at that time was a man named Lee Bollinger, and he was desperately trying to keep some semblance of this program in place because he wanted to have a diverse student body. And he knew this was a politically charged issue. But he was desperately looking for someone, he was looking for a Republican who would be willing to say that it's important that we have this policy at the University of Michigan and at other universities.
So Gerald Ford was actually the one who came forward in 1999 and he stepped forward and said, I will. I will help. Gerald Ford wrote an op-ed in the New York Times basically talking about the importance of fairness, the importance of being able to have diversity and a university. And he based his entire argument around the story of Willis Ward. And That's interesting on several levels.
Number one, it's interesting because Ford never talked about the Willis Ward story throughout, very rarely. He was on TV one time in the 90s. uh on the Larry King show where he was on there with his son Steve and and Steve had kind of prompted him to tell the story. It's the only time we can ever find of Gerald Ford telling the story on camera. Um but he he it wasn't like he was exploiting it for political Purposes or anything.
He never told the Willis Ward story to anyone. But he decided when his alma mater's admissions. policy was under fire, he decided that that was the right time to tell it.
So he t he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times where he basically told the story of of Willis Ward, and for a lot of the country it was the first time that they'd ever heard that story. And it was a very, very powerful op-ed. And the Supreme Court voted soon after that to uphold part of Michigan's policy. And the swing vote on that was Sandr Day O'Connor. And there are a lot of observers who said that it was most likely Gerald Ford's op-ed that helped sway Sandraday O'Connor's mind on how to vote on that.
And a terrific job on the production by Carter McNish. and a special thanks to Buddy Morehouse. who teaches at Hillsdale College, where Carter happens to be a student. And who has also produced a documentary, Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Georgia Tech football game. He did it along with Brian Kruger, and that's available at walmart.com, Amazon.com, for the usual suspects.
A terrific story about friendship. about how love can transcend race. and about so much more, including courage. and courage under fire. Here.
on our American story. This is Julian Edelman from Dudes on Dudes with Gronk and Jules. Sunday mornings, I've got my game day ritual. Coffee. Lucky socks.
And now, new morning uncrustable sandwiches. It's all about that 12-gram protein boost with the new uncrustables, bright-eyed berry, or up and apple flavors. Bright-eyed berries got a feisty. Receiver energy up in Apple. Your classic do-it-all tight end.
Soft, pillowy-packed with protein, and easy enough. for grunk to grab from the freezer. Whether you're on the couch, driving to the tailgate or heading to the locker room. New morning uncrushable sandwiches. Are the MVP of snacks?
Your new Sunday kickoff ritual starts here. with new morning uncrustable sandwiches packed. With 12 grams of protein. The NFL playoffs are here, and it all starts with Wild Card Weekend powered by Verizon. Man, it all comes down to this.
12 teams, 6 games, 3 days, and one epic weekend. My goodness! It's win or go home, and every moment counts on the road to Super Bowl 60. It's a touchdown! Wildcard weekend powered by Verizon, January 10th through 12th.
Visit watch.nfl.com for the full schedule. This is Radhi Devlukia from A Really Good Cry, and I absolutely love getting outside, whether it's a quick walk or a few mindful steps between meeting or a longer run to just clear my head. But the one thing that can really ruin that for me is shoes that just don't feel right. That's why I started wearing ultra running. With their ultra fit, every step feels comfortable, balanced, and strong, like my feet could finally move freely.
What really stood out to me was the roomy toe box, especially because I have wide feet. My toes actually now have room to spread out, which makes movement feel more natural and comfortable. And when your feet aren't cramped, you feel more balanced like every step has a strong, stable foundation. I've noticed that with extra space, my foot muscles get to work, building strength, so I can actually move with more confidence, whether it's a short walk or a longer run. It's amazing how freeing your feet can also help free your mind too.
Ultra fits and moves with you, no matter your pace or your goals, beginner or a marathon runner. They've really become my go-to for any kind of running or training, and I always feel like my feet can do exactly what they're meant to. Feel the difference by visiting altrarunning.com. That's A-L-T-R-A-Running.com. Experience Altra and stay out there.
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Guaranteed human. Mm-hmm.
