Running totally barefoot is for babies, hippies, and dilettantes.

-Anonymous anti-barefooter

The Barefoot Revolution- Minimalist Options

So you want to run barefoot, but just cant bring yourself to actually hit the city streets with those naked feet of yours?  This is probably the most common reason why there are

shoes marketed for being most “like barefoot”.  There is glass, garbage, gum, and generally nasty water and crap everywhere.  Whomever would want to touch any of that with their barefoot could be crazy.  We have compiled a list of different options for those of you who want to benefits of running barefoot, without all of the risks.

They are organized by type(including example pictures), with associated reviews(we paraphrased and condensed many reviews into one uber review), and recommended usage(which type of runner each type of footwear would work best for).

Type- Most Minimal

The Huarache Running Sandal

Review:

This is a great shoe (sandal) once you figure out the quirks of making them and tying them.  What is both an upside and downside is that these are handmade.  You have to buy the rubber sole material, and the type of lace (here a piece of rubber and a leather strap, respectively), trace out your foot, cut it out, lace it, then tweak it to make it work well for you.  All of this takes a little time, but once you get the fit right, it feels great.  It offers good protection from glass and gravel while still giving you the feeling that nothing in on your feet.  These have some problems though in extremely wet, muddy, or technical terrain.  Also not really a winter shoe for snowy locations.

Recommendation:

Great for the runner on a budget and for road runners, as well as anyone running up to 50 miles.  At less than $25, this sandal will last as long as the sole material holds up.  This could be over 1000 miles depending on the material!  It does well for road

runners, runners who do fire roads or dirt single track.  May not work well or hold up on extremely hilly rocky terrain without significant reductions in speed.  This is the official Growstronger.com minimalist shoe.

Type- Most Like Barefoot

The Vibram Five Fingers

Review:

With the separate toes, lack of any midsole, and thin rubber outsole, this shoe was most like being barefoot.  It comes in several models to fit each runners needs and fit the climate. However, due to the highly specialized design, it may not fit every foot, so you should try it before you buy it.  Vibram sole can last over 1000 miles, and the different models will also suit different terrains.  the upper material has been known to tear though after only a few hundred miles.

Recommendation:

Although this shoe needs to be tried on and fit precisely before you buy it, for those that can fit into it, it is the thought of as THE barefoot running shoe.  Recommended for all types of runners, running any terrain, and for any distance.  These can get expensive, anywhere from $75-$120, so they are not great for budget minded runners, but with a good stride these can last for 1000’s of miles.

Type- The Curious Runner

Nike Free-like Shoes

Review:

This is a great all around running shoe.  If you like the idea of keeping the look of a running shoe, but like the idea of creating a more flexible shoe for your feet, this could be it.  Some complaints were that it still had some significant support compared to being actually barefoot, and that the heel was still higher than the forefoot, making it easier to heelstrike.  These also aren’t as good for very technical trails as the individualized lugs have been known to break off.

Recommendation:

Great shoe for people who are interesting in seeing what barefoot running is like, but don’t want to invest too much time in rebuilding their training plans.  For all types of runners in all climates, though it may be best for gym use and road use.  At $85 the shoe may be minimal, but the price is not.  This would also make a good transition shoe for runners wearing very supportive shoes with orthodics.

Type- The Zero Cost Alternative

Modified Current Running Shoe

Review:

Although this is the cheapest option- being free- it is a little complicated to do.  Basically you cut a wedge out of the heel of the shoes you are wearing now.  The idea is to make the heel just as high as the forefoot, thereby removing the heel lift.  A brief example:  The shoe to the right has more foam under the heel than the forefoot.  You can see this with the white foam between the red colors and how it tapers down to all red in the toe area.  What you do is take a knife, and, carefully, cut off the white foam.  This leaves no tread on the heel so there is no traction, but a good stride should not necessitate needing a heel.  Though not having any of the barefoot feel, unless you are wearing a minimalist shoe, this setup seems to be able to allow for proper form.

Recommendation:

Great option for anyone who wants to work on their stride, or for runners covering very technical terrain over many miles, over 50 at least.  Can work for any climate.  Not for runners wanting a more minimalist or barefoot feeling shoe.  Cheapest option being that it is free.  Not for runners afraid to use knives.

Type- Best All-Rounder

Racing Flats

Review:

This is a great all around option.  Racing flats have been around for many years.  There are cross country versions that give added traction and protection for trail runners, and they are already some of the lightest and most minimal running shoes you can buy.  Although they are incredibly light and flexible, they still generally have some heel lift, again, allowing for heel strike, and are still not minimal enough to give the barefoot experience.  However, this option seemed to work best for many different types of runners.

Recommendation:

Best shoe for anyone who still wants to wear a more traditional looking shoe.  Also best for anyone who want more protection than the few millimeters of rubber that a true minimalist shoe delivers.  Recommended for all runners, on all terrains, all climates and all distances.  Also, as many of these can be bought for $20-50, this is a great shoe for all types of budgets.

Type- Most Minimal While Still Looking Like a Shoe

Water Shoes/Feelmax Type Shoes

Review:

With a similar amount of material between you and the ground as the Five Fingers or the Huarache, these shoes will give you good protection, excellent ground feel, a fairly long life, as well as warmth.  The Feelmax shoes seem to wear through a little quicker than the water shoes.  Also these are both very minimal shoes.  They have some traction, but may not be the best for extremely technical trails with lots of steep angles.  These both look enough like normal shoes that they can be worn around town, but are also so minimal that they give you great ground feel and also feel quite a lot like being barefoot.

Recommendation:

For the runners who want very minimal footwear and also don’t want people staring at their feet.  The water socks are perhaps the cheapest of any product if you want to purchase a shoe.  Anywhere from $5-40 means you can go in many directions and have many options.  The Feelmax shoes are a little more expensive, around $70+.  These two options will work for any runner at any distance, in any climate, but you may not want to use these on the most technical of trails due to the thinness of the sole and the lack many of the models have of traction.

Type- All Around Minimal Shoe

Yoga and Martial Arts Shoes

Review:

These are great options.  As you can see from the example shoe to the left, these have no midsole, and no heel lift.  Many will have a little more grippy outsoles than our previous type.  Being lace up they have a good fit, and seeing as how they are still formed around a last-meaning they are molded to the shape of a foot-gives them some upsides and downsides.  The downside is that they dont seem to fit every runner the same way, and they tend to be cut to give some arch support.  The upside though are those very traits.  If you run on more undulating terrain, that support seems to hold your foot in place inside the shoe better than if it wasn’t there.  Many of the name brand shoe companies make these shoes so they can be very stylish as well.

Recommendation:

This is for runners who want to look good while also having as many benefits of going minimalist as possible.  For any runner who finds the shoe comfortable, in any climate, and on most terrains.  You may find traction a problem on very loose terrain.  Moderately priced, these shoes run around $60, so they are not great for the most budget minded.  The glue holding the shoe to the sole has also been a point of contention for some people so this shoe may only last in the hundreds instead of 1000’s of miles.  However, they should work well for anyone racing any distance.

These options are but a few of many out there.  We tried to give you a good example of where to start though, and these seem to all be the most popular options among both barefoot and minimalist runners.  Remember that when starting any barefoot running regimen, that you need to start very slowly.

If anyone has any questions about different options, where to find or buy these shoes, or how to make or modify some of the shoes shown in a couple of the above options, let us know and we will be happy to help out!  Happy Feet Mean Happy Running!

Running is, in actuality, not thoughtless!

- Chris Regnery

And You Thought Running Was Thoughtless? Part 3/3

This is the last part of this 3-part article. Up until now we have looked at what running does to oneself during the act of running, and we have seen how emotions and pain are not things that we should run away from in running.

To fight them is to fight against something that cannot be beaten without making yourself less of a person. In this last part, I get a little philosophical and a bit more in depth with my metaphor of running being like life. Forgive me if it comes off as a little heady, but hey, running for 5 hours at a time, sometimes you cant help but dig a little deeper into things.

It will never be possible to fully explain running.  Just like Kurt Gödel, who came up with the Incompleteness Theorem for mathematics, who states that you will never be able to truly know a system of mathematics if you have to use that system to define itself.  The only way to reach mathematical truth and full knowledge is to step outside the system.  While in the system you cannot describe it fully because to do so would require you to look at it as a whole, as though it were in your hand, which you cannot do because you are inside it.

It’s like trying to describe a house while sitting in it.  You can make references to the inside, and what it would look like from the outside, but because you cannot get that critical point of view from the outside, you’ll never have full knowledge of the whole house; the truth of the house, so to speak.

Well, the house for Gödel was mathematics and logic.  If you truly want to have complete knowledge, you must step outside the system to see what it is, but you can never do that with math because you cannot describe math with anything except math. Anything else is too imprecise to use, so to Gödel, mathematics was not real, but just a fun tool used to describe reality, but would never get the whole picture because it had limitations.

Limitations are what make math the most accurate way of describing reality. Mathematics is the descriptive language of physics, which is used to describe chemistry, which is used to describe biology, which is the study of life. However, reality doesn’t have limitations, there is something naturally wild about it- hence all the strangeness in quantum mechanics which states that in reality certain things only have a probability of happening and not a certainty of happening, and so to truly grasp reality in its fullest, without any probabilities and theories and equations and limitations, you must be able to get at it by a system without them, a system without limitations, really without a system at all since a true system implies limitations- it requires separate interacting entities-and reality has none of these things, it is a limitless whole.

Well, this may have pissed a lot of mathematicians off, but it works well for this analogy.  If you were to try to get a runner to describe what it is about running they like or enjoy, or try to get them to explain why they do it, as soon as they open their mouth it has been reduced to something its not and they know it.

Running is a metaphor for truth and life. It is an individual’s expression of freedom. It is in a way, an art. The fluid effortless motion of a good runner is a beautiful thing and an expression of the runner. Each runner is different and each has their own stride, they each paint a different picture on the canvas of reality. A look at a runner should be enough to describe why they run, just as a look at a Picasso painting would answer most people’s question of why make art. In fact it is just the same as asking an artist why they paint or sculpt- the answer will never be enough.  It lies beyond descriptions in a way that to try and describe it is limiting the limitless.

Zen has something to say about this as do many religions.  Many meta-physicians also know of this truth.  The idea that you can know something with all of your being but you can’t describe it, and so it comes out as a sound, a gesture, Mu, what-have-you, shows that they know what they are talking about, so to speak.

So running is art, is Zen, is Mu, is Jesus, is God, is life, is you, and is me.  Yet it isn’t.  Its a statement of mind not a statement of words, which is why I think so many runners have a hard time describing why they run and come up with something half-assed like, ” I run because I can”, or “Why not”, or “seems like fun”, or “My dad used to beat me when I was a kid so I ran away from him until I decided I liked the feeling and joined the track team”.

These are glib answers and are offered only because in seeing the essence of running, like life, they can’t put a handle on it with words without coming up short, very short. To try and describe why a runner runs with a full-assed answer would leave you with a treatise like this, and yet all that I have said in all this is that you can’t say anything at all. Perhaps this is why to this day I will tell people to go out and run a good distance themselves, and then they will have their own answer.

The real truths in life are not told to you, they cannot be taught in the classroom, although you can teach someone the best ways to find truths, they are only what others have used to find them, truths themselves are not describable. They are attainable only by experiencing them firsthand. To know them you must feel them, but they are more than a feeling- their knowledge comes before any explanation and they are greater than any system of description such as language or mathematics.

You must live life, and not shut off or shut out aspects of it you don’t like. This is not to say that we should be okay with murderers and rapists and the like, and it is not to say that we should prescribe to some sort of anarchist mentality.

It does mean that to be a human, means that we must accept that humans are capable of some pretty horrible, gruesome, unsettling things. We are also however, capable of some extraordinarily beautiful and altruistic things.

We must deal with this darker side, but not shut it out. To lock it away allows it to grow until it becomes unwieldy. We must harness this side of ourselves and use it. This is the passion many people will describe they have when they are writing a novel, or painting, or are out with their kids, or when they are drafting a proposal at work, or making a sale for their job, or while running through the mountains.

This passion makes one feel alive; I run to be able to reach out and touch reality herself, although at times I feel she is the one that touches me. You are a human, both with the good and bad, to shut one out, you are only shorting yourself part of your own humanity.

Anyway, I have now rambled on for far too long about something that I say can’t be nailed down with words.  So, to avoid self destruction and running the risk of sounding preachy, which I fear I have already done, I leave you now to find your own meanings and to, as always, work to help yourself GrowStronger.

Running barefoot on rolling fields of grass, vibrant green and soft from a recent rain, is like running on velvet, who doesn’t want to run on velvet? No one, that’s who.

-unnamed notorious barefooter

The Barefoot Revolution: Part 4

With yet another successful week under my belt, there are a few lessons that I feel I should share.  The goal of this post is to group all the advice, lessons, and tips that I have shared and learned since going barefoot, and put it all  in one place.

So, my advice will start with how I feel one should start going barefoot, whether running, or walking.

*Just do it.  Start right now by taking off your shoes and socks and walking   around the office or your house barefoot.  When you can, run errands, go for walks, and if you feel like it, going on hikes barefoot will also help the transition.

*Listen to your sole(s).  Judge how far to push yourself each day by the soles of your feet.  When they get tender and raw, stop, that’s it for the day.  You may need to bring along another type of footwear on any walks, runs, or hikes until you are confident you can tolerate all the time it will take to complete these outings barefoot.

*No More Athletic Shoes!!  Unless you want to modify your shoes by cutting off the heels, try to use non-supportive footwear any time you need to wear something on those feet.  There are dress shoes that have flat soles with no heel lift for the office, and there are many versions of athletic looking shoes that also give you minimal support and no heel lift.  Wear sandals when you can, but if you have to wear flip-flops, go for the least cushioned varieties.  Learn to make your own huaraches.

*Learn what to wear for those times when you cant go barefoot.  Whether huaraches, moccasins, racing flats, Vibram Five Fingers, a racing flat, or a water sock; sometimes going barefoot just isn’t possible.  Right now in much of the country it is getting colder and running barefoot in the snow will not be a feasible option.  This winter I will be running in a pair of water socks that I got off the Internet for $10.

Ok, so now you know what to do, but how do you do it?  Well, here are a few tips for a smooth transition that I have learned so far:

*For runners, run only as far as your soles tell you to run, and NO MORE!  If you start to move towards barefoot in the colder months, move down from supportive footwear slowly.  If you run in Brooks’ Beast shoe, you may want to step down to something like their Adrenaline before you go to a racing flat.

*Learn to run with proper form.  Barefoot runners don’t land on their heels.  They cant, it hurts too much.  In fact, landing heel first was something that was only possible with the invention of the modern running shoe.  Learn to run barefoot by starting to land on your mid-foot and forefoot.  Land with your foot directly underneath your body, and with significant knee bend.  Learning to run this way will cause a bit more work for your quads, Achilles, calves and feet, but they will adjust quickly.

*Do Not Push Through Pain.  Leave this mentality for races.  In transitioning and training, this mentality will lead to certain injury.  Notably in your feet, Achilles tendons and calves.  Almost across the board, beginning barefooters suffer very tight calves and Achilles.  Stretch these prodigiously and massage as often as possible.  Don’t run if they are painfully tight.  Similarly, your feet will feel the adjustments next.  The tops of your feet, shin muscles, arches, and plantar fascia will all feel tight and sore as these muscles and ligaments and tendons all start to work as they should.

*Forget sticking to a training plan.  Just set guidelines for your training.  Shoot for a certain distance or time to run each day, but don’t push it just to finish those last couple minutes if it means pushing through tightness or discomfort.  That discomfort will just be there stronger the next day.  Better to call it quits for the day and walk home to run again tomorrow, than try to be macho and sideline yourself with a pulled muscle or sprained foot.

*Run on the hard stuff first.  There is no better judge of proper form than concrete.  Learning to run or walk on the least forgiving surface will ensure that your mechanics are solid, meaning you will suffer less injuries later because of these perfected mechanics. Also, in the beginning its easier to avoid debris on concrete than on a trail.  After a while, it wont matter, you can just run over it all.

The number one lesson I have to give people though is this:

*RELAX.

When you find it to be tough going, or when your feet start to feel sensitive or feel abraded, when you feel yourself tightening up, Relax.  Don’t tense up more then needed.  Don’t forget to land with short quick strides, knee bent, on your forefoot, and back straight.  Relax your shoulders, relax your feet.  The best runners in the world, from Usain Bolt to Haile Geberselassie all look smooth and relaxed, no matter what the pace.  Tightening up will not only make your run uncomfortable and tire you out sooner, but it will cause unnecessary pain.  A tense barefoot runner is more likely to land with too much impact force.  They are more likely to pull a muscle. More than anything though, landing on seeds, gravel, twigs, even glass will be painful and demoralizing.  Landing relaxed allows you to smoothly float over these obstacles.  Focus on putting your foot down and picking it up with not kick-back.  Land softly and lightly.  Kiss the ground with your foot.

Well, that about sums it up for this week.  Next week I will address all aspects of proper bio-mechanics in a totally barefoot running stride.  That topic alone will be quite intensive and was beyond the scope of just one article.  I have laid out here and now though some basic guidelines to follow in order to grow stronger and healthier feet.  As the first things to hit the ground, it is only fitting that they should be just as strong and healthy as the rest of your body.

And dont worry, your feet will not get rough or callused.  They will get tougher and the skin will thicken, yes.  However, running on concrete is great for buffing out any rough spots and leaving only smooth soft skin.  The one common misconception is ugly feet, but your feet will become more muscular, defined, the soles will toughen, become remarkable softer, and plus, they will be tanned.  In the end, barefoot running makes for beautiful feet!

There are no securities in nature, life is either a daring adventure or nothing

-Helen Keller

And You Thought Running Was Thoughtless? Part 2/3

As the second and middle part of this article, I am going to share with you some thoughts on how emotions and sensations of pain are part of the journey as a

human, and how running can be a great metaphor for life. I will discuss how giving in to these sensations in running can teach you a great deal about yourself and help you grow not only as a runner, but as a person. Trying to suppress your emotions and running away from pain will leave an emptiness that many people will end up filling with money, sex, drugs, or alcohol. Working to incorporate these things also fills this emptiness and unlike the others, helps us to be better people. I think that this is a great metaphor and you can it and apply it to all areas of life.

One note on pain. I am talking about pain more in the Buddhist context, where suffering is considered pain and suffering is perhaps the main focus in Buddhist teachings.  I am not referring to the sharp immediate pain associated with trauma to the body.  This would include things like broken bones, sprained ankles, getting tattoos, or piercings.  These types of pain are immediate and denote injury.  Seeking out this type of pain just for the pain with things like tattoos is also not what I am talking about

The types of pain associated with suffering are more in line with the mental and physical and emotional pain associated with a long day at work, or with being on your feet running for 8 hours, or with losing a loved one or your job.  These sensations of pain and suffering are, in my opinion, things we have to come to grips with in life and things that help us deal with situations better.  Learning to accept these types of pain helps to make you more healthy emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically, and this is something that Growstronger.com is all about.

Part of being human is to feel emotions and pain; part of being alive is to suffer, if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t.  To put suffering into a negative context makes it bad, but to look at it as it is-part of being human and just another emotion and feeling- allows one to feel more alive, more high with life, than you could ever do if you gave into it.  You will be rewarded with a true high of life that truly allows you to focus now not on the intensity of the pain, but on the beauty of life and the knowledge that you are life, and you are not just running with the trees and rocks and stones and grass, but they are running with you too, they are no different from you.  By accepting pain and suffering for what they are and not seeing them as inherently bad, you become more compassionate!

This is not masochism. This is not sexual and pain is certainly not enjoyable to me. I would not want to be subjected to the emotional powder keg you get when you hit the wall every second of everyday. However, this is not because I think it’s bad.

I would get too used to it and it would cease to be what it should be. It is just like the emotions associated with fun and happiness. If someone loved to feel good and to feel the release of riding, say, a roller coaster, they would try to preserve that feeling and not destroy it. If they rode that roller coaster all day every day, the release would become mundane and no longer fun for them. In fact, they would come to see it as a bad thing because its now become just another thing they do that seems purposeless. So no, just because I accept that powder keg doesn’t make me a masochist.

Those feelings are a part of life, and to want to run away from them makes you less alive and less human. To accept them is to feel more alive, more human, and makes what was once mundane, exciting; it makes people and situations that once seemed to annoy you, to not seem all that bad at all. To accept suffering and pain makes you feel more compassionate.

At least to me it does.  Perhaps you now think I am certifiably crazy, rambling on about running as though it were the secret to life.  But this doesn’t even begin to encompass the range of feelings and the joys of running to me.  That is the reason why I run, and so much more.

The conclusion to this article will be posted next week.

Dude, take your shoes off and live a little!

-Barefoot Ted

The Barefoot Revolution: Part 3

These last two weeks, up through today, Sunday October 4, 2009, have finally given me a taste of what it will be like to run for hours on end without shoes.  Imagine being able to leave you house, wearing only a pair of shorts and a shirt, needing no shoes, and being able to run through the rain, through rivers, on trails, and on road without any thought to what shoes I need for today, or what socks would be good for wet weather.  This fantasy is now becoming my reality.

Two weeks ago I was running a steady 40-45 minutes barefoot, all on concrete and asphalt.  I was able to finish all of these runs no problem, but after a few of them, namely certain runs that would not be on the baby soft concrete of my sister neighborhood, but on the older and rougher asphalt of the jogging trails, would leave my feet feeling a little tender by minute 40.

That Saturday, September 26th, I hiked for 6 hours with my huaraches, then completed my last 40 minute run of the week barefoot.  After 6 hours of walking my feet were plenty sore, but I finished.

This past week however, was a different story.  Not only was it the start of the month of October, but it was also the start of what I feel is my own future with this barefoot running.  To start, I upped my times each day to 50-55 minutes of barefoot, but this week, my feet felt completely different.

I would like to note at this point that my idea to go completely barefoot has been the best idea and best path, I feel, for people who want to go with more minimalist footwear.  I say this because up until this week, I was able to run barefoot for my set time with no blisters, but it was slow going.  With nothing protecting you from the ground but your own skin, your stride and bio-mechanics will get in check really quick.  I tried to speed up several times during my initial building phase, thinking I could pick up the pace a little, but each time I did either my calves and Achilles would start to tighten up, or the soles of my feet would not land right and would scrape the ground at toe-off.  This would of course cause me to slow back down to where running was comfortable again.

This past Tuesday, I had one of the best runs ever though.  I started off slow as usual, but decided to go for a run on the asphalt walking paths in my area, they are more scenic, but also rougher.  I was able to keep the same pace no problem.  My feet felt like there was a layer of leather protecting them!  I clocked myself for a stretch of road that I knew to be a mile, and at my normal lazy pace I completed it in about 10 minutes flat…not too bad for no shoes.  I passed into a neighborhood that was all smooth concrete, and tried the same distance, but this time I would go as fast as I could.  I clocked it off at about 6:45 for that mile!

The next day I went down to Purdue Campus and ran on all sorts of surfaces new and old, rocks, pebbles, stairs, even treading lightly over some small pieces of glass, all without problem.

Today, Sunday, I did another hike, this one 7 hours, with an additional 1hr 40mins of barefoot running in the middle.

After 2 full months I would like to report that my feet are changing for the better.  The soles are thickening, but not callusing, it is more like a soft layer of leather.  They remain quite smooth, but the cushioning of my feet themselves is now growing to disperse some of the shock and pressure of running barefoot.  My only regret so far is not starting this sooner because it is starting to get cold and I will soon have to put something on my feet to handle all the snow that will surely come this winter.

At this point my advice to anyone would be to listen to your body 100%.  If you get tired and your stride starts to break down, take a break or call it quits for the day.  If you get sore or stiff while you are building up, do the same, stop completely and call it a day, or take a break.  So far I have run only as far as my body will let me each day.  Some days the 40-50 minutes of running is not enough, so I will either go for a long hike barefoot or in my huaraches, or I will go for another run in the evening of about an hour with my shoes on.

I will leave you with a cool tip I have heard to do, and did myself with much satisfaction.  If you must run in shoes for some reason, and you don’t want to spend money buying a pair of racing flats or something with minimal cushioning, this is what you do.  Take your pair of trainers you are using now.  Look at them from the side.  You will notice that the heel foam and cushioning is about 2x as thick as the forefoot.  Well in order to run more easily on the forefoot, take a strong serrated knife or a small saw, and cut a wedge out of the heel so that the heel foam is the same height as the forefoot.  The wedge should run from the back of the shoe, towards the middle where the foam becomes a consistent thickness, tapering down as you go.  This will leave you with no tread on the heel, but if you are running with proper technique, you should be landing on your forefoot anyway, so the heel tread is useless.

Let me know if you have any questions and Ill guide you through it.  Take care and Happy Running!!

Either things will get better, or you will black out on the pavement

- Dean Karnazes

And You Thought Running Was Thoughtless? Part 1/3

There are two schools of thought when it comes to distance running and how it is best to accomplish a set distance.

In one school there is the idea that the sport is running and that one should run through a race with no walking breaks outside of the necessary bathroom breaks and the time it takes to go through a checkpoint or refill a water bottle or backpack with supplies. You run the race as far as you can, then walk when you can no longer run, and if you have to, crawl, but you give it your all and leave everything out there, exposing yourself to your own limitations and pushing them to the edge.

The other school of thought surrounds the notion that you can be faster if you use a run/walk strategy. This would involve either breaking down the running with walking breaks every set number of minutes- such as 25 minutes of running and then 5 minutes of walking- or using the land to determine when to walk, such as going up or down steep inclines. The idea is that the walking helps to give your muscles a break from running and in doing so keeps them fresher for longer so you can run the sections that you do run, relatively faster.

Well, this is a tried and true strategy and the best runners in the field will use this strategy to win race after race. I don’t, but then again, I like to run.

I don’t worry about my time anymore, I just like to run, so I run as far as I can, then walk if I have to, but I would rather finish slower and run more, than finish faster and walk some.  Not that walking is bad, I just get into a zone and go, and when I hit a wall, breaking through is so much sweeter when it’s not with the knowledge that it was done while walking or knowing that I will get to walk in a few minutes, its done knowing that I hit one wall, and it hurt like hell; I broke through and let the tears flow, knowing full well that I wont get any breaks till the next one- except for the time it takes me to refill a water bottle or grab some food out of my bag if I should need to do this.

I think I finally have my answer from a debate I was having with myself about using a run/walk strategy or running all the way.  I LIKE running all the time, granted I will have very different paces through a run- moderate at the beginning until I feel warmed up, then I go very, very slowly for the next 10 miles; the next 10 are at my normal long run training pace, and I finish strong with my 5k pace- this is for a marathon length run, its different when I go longer.

The last two times I ran this distance, I would stop at halfway to refill my water bottles and grab a sandwich from my pack, although I was eating a package of shot blocks every hour too, but I had those in easy reach and just ate and ran. I had to get the sandwich out of my pack so I had to walk to do that to avoid running off the trail while looking through my pack, although it takes no more than 30 seconds to get the sandwich and put the pack back on so the walking is relatively nil.

Sure enough, both times, I hit the wall at around mile 20.  I wanted to quit so badly.  I felt worse mentally than anything my body was going through, although my feet were hurting and wet and blistered, my legs ached, my back ached, my shoulders ached, my hands hurt, my fingertips hurt and everything on my body was ultrasensitive to pain.  I could barely keep my eyes open.  I wanted to quit more than anything.  My emotions were in the toilet; I wanted to lie down and curl up and start crying, not because of the pain, but because my body and brain chemistry were committing haru kiri.

Plus, it’s mentally taxing more than you might think to keep it together and run for 20 miles.  I felt as though someone could stab me in the chest and I would thank him for doing me a favor- I didn’t care what happened to me, I just wanted to quit.

Then the depression gave way to anger. I didn’t want to quit but my body was going to make me, my mind and emotions were going to make me, and so I got angry.  I started running harder, the more pain my legs felt the better. It was their fault I was so in pain, so now they were going to be punished for this treachery.  I used my upper body more too, involving every muscle that was aching, just to let it know I wasn’t going to let its whining stop me.  I found that all this was so extreme, the physical pain and fatigue, the mental anguish and fatigue and depression, especially the severity of the emotions, that I let out this long, guttural, primal yell.  Immediately after this I felt better.

Not just a little better, but instantaneously a lot better.  My body didn’t hurt as badly- it was tired but not in pain- and best of all, my mood had cleared.  I was only a few miles until I was going to finish and be able to stop running, but I felt like I could go another 15 or 20 miles.  It was so much different now and yet my emotions were still so high it was confusing.  It was as though I had lost a very close loved one to a slow and painful death only to realize that as I was at my most depressed and angry, that it was a mistake, and they weren’t dead after all, but standing beside their casket shaking my hand .  I ran back up to the house after running more than a marathon with tears because I knew that from now on, all the fatigue and pain, and tiredness and depression, and wanting to quit, NEEDING to quit, HAVING to quit, is all mental.

Sure my body would get tired, but properly fueled and injury free, it was all in my head as far as everything else was concerned.  My body would give out well after my mind if I held it together.  I was higher than a kite, or any drug I had taken in the past, that evening.  That was the first time I had pushed that hard without giving up or walking and it paid off in spades.  The next week I went through the same thing.  Even though I had had the revelation that everything was mental, when you are that tired and feel that bad, you think it was just a trick of your mind that it happened before.  Rationalizing the irrational, or the “unrationalizable” is not possible.

Part 2 of this 3 part article will appear next week, so dont forget to check back next Tuesday, or you can become a member and get email notifications letting you know of each new post!

The Barefoot Revolution: Part 2

All good things come to those who wait.  That should be the motto of barefoot running. On Thursday, Aug. 20th, I started to develop some pain/tightness in my right foot.  I thought nothing of it, after 10 minutes of running it ebbed enough that I finished my hour long run without any other thought about it.  Little did I know that this decision would lead to injury.

This post will be the second installment in a series of posts about my journeys into barefoot running.  Again, I do not advocate going to or not to barefoot running above what you are already doing.  I like the idea of paying less on shoes every 2 months.  I also like the idea of strengthening my feet and lower legs and working on my stride.  I also personally feel that running shoes keep going more and more towards support and cushioning that in the end doesn’t seem to help people keep from getting injured.  So these series of articles will explore my own experiences.

The next morning after my last run, I woke up, stood up, and my foot immediately was in pain.  Sharp pain that radiated throughout my midfoot.  I tried to go for a short run, thinking maybe it was just a catch or it was me just still being tired and not really focused and I just stood up wrong or something.  I made it 100ft and turned around.  I waited until Monday to run again, but the same thing happened Monday morning.

Feeling depressed, I researched my symptoms on various podiatry journals and found out I had most likely sprained the second toe at the tarsometatarsal(TMT)joint.  This is a classic mid-foot sprain apparently, caused by excessive torque on the foot while up on the balls of the foot.  I followed the advice given, and took a week off, and iced and taped my foot everyday.

The following Monday, foot still taped, I ran in my huaraches for 1 mile.  No pain during or after the run, so that was a positive sign.  I ran 1.5 miles the next day in shoes, and a 5k in the sandals on Wednesday.  Still no pain had returned.  I noticed that running in the sandals felt better than in shoes, and was easier and more fun. That was interesting.  I alternated between sandals and shoes for the rest of the week.  I discovered that I was beginning to hate my shoes, they wrecked my form, and it always felt like I was trying too hard in my shoes because they were so inflexible compared to an almost bare foot!

When I run barefoot (or in sandals), I have to pay attention to my body, I am made to focus on how I am running, and on my stride at all times.  With shoes its the other way around.  I don’t have the same feeling of the ground and can easily drift off into not paying attention at all to what I am doing.  This leads to bad form.  Running without the shoes is almost like a forced meditation, you are perfectly in sync at all times.

At this point, I decided to go totally unshod, and not use my shoes at all, but how could I do this without getting injured, I wondered?  A common complaint when transitioning among barefoot runners is pain in the calf, Achilles, and foot.  After reading up a little on barefootrunning.org, I found my answer.

I would have to go totally barefoot.  The reasoning behind not using a transition shoe or a sandal or anything else in the beginning is sound.  The idea is that the soles of your feet, not yet being tough enough to handle running for as far as you could in shoes, should act as your mediator, telling you when to stop running for the day.  My soles would have told me to stop before I got too sore, too stiff, or pushed as hard as I did.  Running in a transition shoe had allowed me to push all those newly stressed muscles and ligaments kept safe in my shoe too hard too soon.

So, that Monday, September 7th, I ran a 5k barefoot.  My feet felt a little tender, but not in pain.  I ran a 5k again on Tuesday, and the rest of the days that week through Friday, and each day was fun and pain-free.  I ran a 10k on Saturday, also pain-free, and it was FUN!!  So, what had I learned then?

The key is the beginning.  I am now thinking that the way to go is totally barefoot for beginners until you build up to being able to run around what your normal daily mileage was with shoes-not counting any long runs obviously.  If you want to eventually wear some minimalist footwear, do that after your initial phase of totally barefoot.  Go only as far as your soles will let you each day.

So far I feel good about this barefoot thing. My feet and legs are getting stronger and my stride never felt better.  Next week, I plan on going out for 40-45minutes/day instead of the 30 I did this week.

My eventual goal has changed now somewhat.  Instead of 10 weeks to shoeless freedom, it is just to get to my old daily mileage of 15-20 miles.  Once I make it to that totally barefoot, I will start using my sandals and resume building up to a 50 mile run, it just may not be the 50 mile run that I wanted to make by Halloween.

Running Abroad: Journey to Madrid

At the moment, I am living, and studying, in Salamanca, Spain (some of you may already be aware of this).  Furthermore, I enjoy running and do it often (hopefully a greater number knows that).  And finally, I plan on, and have continued to run, while living in Spain (please tell me you are catching the drift here).  This is how I will document some of my most favorite experiences while Running Abroad.

Cheat Sheet

1. What/Why – Less Runners in Spain
2. El Parque Del Retiro – 7.5/10
3. Pictures

What/Why – Less Runners in Spain

Recently, I made my way over to Madrid, the capital city of Spain, and a runner’s paradi-…

I am going to stop there.  Running in Spain is not nearly as common as it is in the States.  In fact, running in Salamanca is a rarity.  If you don’t believe me, all you need to do is look at the Running Club I started on Meetup.com.

Salamanca Running Club

Three members.  All Americans.  Scientifically accurate?  You better believe it.

Running with the… Spaniards?

Now, let’s get something straight first.  People DO run in Spain.  In fact, El Parque De Madrid (better known as El Parque Del Retiro – see the above picture) had runners; however, Madrid is a large city, and it was summer-time.  I honestly feel that every runner in Madrid was inside that park when I was there (and that isn’t saying all that much).

Before I start getting hate mail, I should say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.  I enjoy running the same regardless of the number of people doing it.  In fact, there are some positive aspects to participating in a less-popular activity.

Crowds.  Cash.  Cool-Factor.  I call them the 3 C’s and I just came up with it mere moments ago.

Crowds

If there are less people running, you avoid the crowds.

Cash

If no one is running, running paraphernalia can be usually had for less.

Cool-Factor

Doing something different is inherently cooler than being one of the sheeple.

El Parque Del Retiro

As you can tell, I learned a lot from running in Madrid, but how was the run, actually?  I suppose I have to get to that eventually…

It was wonderful.  I stayed in a great hostel called Bull’s Hostal, which was close to the center of downtown Madrid.  This meant that theoretically I should have no problem getting around, finding a place to run, and get back home in one piece.  The key word in that last sentence is “should.”  As in, I “should” have a better sense of direction OR I “should” be able to find my running equipment AND EVEN maybe I “should” have chosen someplace where people can understand my unique version of Spanish.

The day started innocently enough and by the time I got to the hostel, I figured I earned a nice siesta.  You will soon realize why I hadn’t.

After waking up, I realized I had forgotten my running clothes and running shoes.  Oops!  Oh well, no bother.  This is Madrid, thought Chris.  I can just go and get some clothes downtown and use my Chuck’s to run in.

Suffice it to say that I could barely manage even this.  I did find a Nike, and I did boy some running clothes.  That wasn’t a problem.  What was a problem, however, was using ONE STREET to find my way back to the hostel.  All I literally had to do was keep walking straight down the sidewalk.  However, I kept doubting which direction I should be going, so I kept turning around and going the other way.  This must have happened four or five times.  No joke.

I made it back to the hostel and was all suited up to go running.  I had my Camelbak (thanks Blake), my camera, ID/money (for emergencies), and a key to my room.  I was good to go.  Only after my run did I found out that I had brought my running clothes and needlessly purchases more at Nike…

The run from the hostel to the El Parque Del Retiro was uneventful.  I got a lot of strange looks (it is not common for people to run outside of the park apparently) but nothing that phased me.  The running shoes were not comfortable at all (being basically a piece of rubber sole) but nothing worth stopping for.  Finally, I made it to the entrance of the park and was welcome by several runners going back just as I made it up the steps.  This is where I spent the next hour running and occassionally stopping to snap a few choice photographs – see below).

The park was beautiful.  All sorts of different people (Spainairds, Asians, some serious Americans, etc.) were doing all sorts of interesting things (soccer, tai chi, some serious powerwalking, etc.).  The scenery was really beautiful and frankly, I can’t wait until I get another opportunity to run there.  If you haven’t made it over to Madrid, or to El Parque Del Retiro I am going to seriously recommend that you do.

Overall Rating: 7.5/10

Pictures

Within the main entrance.

Atop a stairway.

A wedding?

Another stairway.

The middle of the park.

Building made of glass.

Exotic/Gated part of the park.

Mickey Mouse?