Barefoot Runner

Run Fat B!tch Run

2012-04-21T18:58:07+01:00

Saw a great book in WH Smiths today...

I have no idea what the book is about other than it's about encouraging fat ladies to lose weight by running, but the title caught my attention and made me laugh.

Sound Advice from the Virgin London Marathon Organisers

2012-04-17T11:20:59+01:00

Sound advice from the Virgin London Marathon organisers in their Final Instructions (PDF) on page 9 ...

... but by all means wee in people's gardens elsewhere ;-)

Inov-8 Bare-X 180 Minimalist Shoes Look Good

2012-04-16T17:14:15+01:00

I was browsing Wiggle the other day and happened across these rather attractive looking, from an aesthetic and spec perspective, minimalist running shoes from Inov-8...

These are the Inov-8 Bare-X 180 shoes (here on Wiggle), and they're a minimalist shoe with a zero-drop, no insole and only 3mm worth of rubber between your feet and the ground below. This is about the same as the Vibram Five Finger Bikilas I currently race in.

Given they're currently cheaper than the Vibram Five Finger Bikilas, I'm going to definitely consider these when my VFF wear through, which I don't think will be too long now. I just want to try the Inov-8s on first to see how much space there is in the toebox.

Race Report: Reading Half Marathon 2012

2012-04-03T17:45:28+01:00

Sunday saw me take part in my first half marathon in over 13 years, the Reading Half Marathon, and what a brilliant race it was.

As you may have read back in November, I took the plunge and entered the Reading Half Marathon and continued with the MAF training principals exclusively with the idea I'd going into my race with at least a great aerobic base and possibly missing some speed. This was a bit of a gamble as I'd never heard anyone train like this before and had certainly never taken this approach myself. Seeing as I hadn't done a half marathon in a while, I thought "What the heck. It'll be an interesting experiment. Worst case scenario, I blow it. Best case, I finish the race strong and get the sub-90 minute finish time I'd be aiming for".

Well, Sunday morning arrived and it was a glorious morning. The sun was shining, the temperature was perfect and my wife and I hopped on our bikes and took a gentle cycle to the Madejski stadium. As it's only 6.5km away from home I opted to cycle to and from the race rather than fight with the crowds on the shuttle buses or pay for parking. This proved to be a very wise choice as there were way more people about than I was expecting. It also proved to be a very good warm up, so once at the stadium, I only had a short little run to do and some dynamic stretching before making my way to the start of the race. The 30 mins I'd given myself for this turned out to be plenty.

Despite this being my first half marathon in over 13 years, I didn't go for a "wing it and see" approach. I actually devised a race strategy. In order to get the sub-90 minute time I was aiming for, I decided on running a negative split, that is run the first half slower than the second. Then I went a step further and broke the race up into three 7km chunks with the aim of running each 7km chunk in a progressively faster time.

After a little bit of time with my calculator, I came with the following splits I'd aim to run for each 7km:

0 - 7km: 31:30 which is 4:30/km.
Plenty slow enough to deal with the first hill and the inevitable slow start caused by the sheer number of runners.
7 - 14km: 30:00 which is 4:17/km.
This is slightly slower than the pace I'd have to have sustained if I ran a constant pace for a sub-90. I actually planned to run this leg at about 4:16/km, the required pace, just to be safe. 30mins was an easy number to remember.
14 - 21km: 28:30 which is 4:04/km.
This is quite a fast pace, but I thought I could do it, especially if my middle 7 turned out as I'd hoped and took me less than 30 minutes.

Now those with an eye for maths will notice this takes me to 90mins for 21km and a half-marathon is 21.1km. Well, this was all about ease of calculation whilst on the run and with the final 100m being left out of the equation I knew I could always run like a man possessed for 100m at the end if need be :-) . I would however run the last 7km with the last 100m in mind anyway.

The idea behind this three-way split is it would give me a good way of assessing my pace and race in conjunction with how I felt at each point of the race and I could then make any changes as I felt fit, whilst also running a negative split.

As it so happens, my planning turned out brilliantly. At just after 10am we were all sent on our way. I was quite far from the start line so didn't hear the gun but registered we were off when the announcer said "And they're off" (about 15 seconds after starting the race). It took me about 1 minute 15 seconds to cross the line and then I was off in the middle of a sea of people for our 21.1km around Reading.

Things start off very slowly due to the sheer number of people ahead of me, but things soon started thinning out a bit, but not much, just after the 3km. I was feeling great, enjoying the crowds and great weather and my legs just ticked over.

I went through the first 7km just behind schedule in 31:36 (watch time, not gun or chip time). Not bad at all considering there were way more people than I anticipated, congestion was quite bad at the beginning and the steepest climb fell within this period. Happy with this and happy with the fact I was still feeling good, I picked up the pace a bit and ticked over the next 7km in 29:09 (1:00:45), going through the 10km mark in a chip time of 43:30. A bit quicker than I'd planned but I wasn't too concerned as this leg included a fair bit of downhill running and I was still feeling great. Happy with my second leg and a bit ahead of schedule, I stepped the pace up a bit and headed for the finish line. This last 7km was thankfully quite flat and I think it definitely helped that I knew exactly where I still had to run before getting to the finish line.

With just over 2km to go we turned back into Greenpark back onto the road on which we started for a little hair-pin loop before heading into the stadium. It was about half way up the inbound part of the hair-pin that I saw the 1:30 (90 mins) chip time pacer for the first time since the start of the race and he shouted out that we still had a chance to catch him and dip under 90mins for the run. I took that as a challenge and dug in deep. I wanted to catch and pass him. So far I was more or less on track for a sub-90, but I knew if I passed him, I'd definitely do it. It was at this point I started to feel a little tired, but I ignored those feelings and pushed on and passed the pacer on Shooters Way with about 200m to go and I just kept going. That last 7km segment ended up being only slightly faster than the one before taking me 29:01 (1:29:46) and I entered the stadium and sped my way to the finish line, crossing in a gun time of 1:31:19.

I was very happy with this time. I'd almost dipped below 90 mins for a gun time on a huge race. Knowing that it took me somewhere between 75 and 90 seconds to cross the start line, I was quite confident I'd dipped under 90 mins for my chip time, especially as I passed the pacer, but not overly so as I knew it would be close. I'd have to wait for the official results to get my chip time.

I did the goodie bag and medal walk through and met my wife outside the stadium. I then went for a very short and gentle cool down run. I ended up cutting this short as my calves were starting to cramp so instead we jumped on our bikes and headed into town for lunch. I thought it only appropriate to take my wife out for lunch after she sat reading her Kindle in the sun in the stadium waiting for me. This cycle into town and then ultimately on to home ended up being a great cool down.

That evening I checked the race results and found this...

1:29:52 !!! Yes!!!! I'd done it. My racing strategy had worked perfectly, and it's just as well I didn't stick to it too closely as I don't think I'd have crept under 90 mins if my middle leg had been slower.

My final position was 731 out of 13104 finishers.

Job done and in my Vibram Five Fingers. I'm back to running half marathons and I've gone under the 90 minute mark. Now I've done it, it should be easier to do it again in the future.

My 5k split times...

5K: 00:22:15
10K: 00:43:30
15K: 01:04:54
20K: 01:25:26

... lead me to believe I have a sub-19 5k, sub-39 10k and sub-60 15k in my legs this season and I think I'll be using these as my goals for this season.

Oh yes, and just before leaving the race village, I couldn't help but leave my mark...

I couldn't resist grabbing the top spot at the Reading Half Marathon :-D

Despite not actually getting my race number and T-shirt in the post (I'm doubtful it was even sent), this was a great race, a great route and made better by some great weather. I'll definitely be doing this race again, but maybe not next year. We'll see how it fits in with the other halves around this time and my training.

Sh*t Runners Say

2012-02-23T09:47:37+00:00

Runners are strange creatures. We get up at insane hours of the morning to run insane distances on an almost daily basis. Along with this comes all the banter about these shoes, that injury, and the next best running gadget or race you must run.

Recently talk has turned to barefoot and minimalist running and along with it a whole new topic of discussion for those long Sunday runs. As with anything new or different, you always get the "experts" and those who get a bit over enthusiastic and this is what Steven Sashen of Invisible Shoes has capitalised on for this first video, "Sh*t Barefoot Runners Say"...

Of course, there's also the flip side, which Steven has just captured in his sequel... "Sh*t Runners Say to Barefoot Runners"...

I don't think I've said any of the things in the first, but I've definitely been the recipient of many of the comments in the second.

Tim Noakes: "If you've got Lore of Running, tear out the section on nutrition"

2012-02-02T14:35:37+00:00

I'm slowly working my way through Phil Maffetone's The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing and I must say it's quite a varied read. One topic I've just finished reading is about carbohydrate intolerance. Carbohydrate Intolerance and the Two-Week Test gives a good idea what the chapter is about, though this post doesn't go into the performance affecting aspects like the book does.

I've read on numerous occasions, and with ever increasing regularity now, about how maybe we've got it all wrong and we really shouldn't be consuming anywhere near the level of carbs that we do, but this is the first time I've actually seen anyone correlate common aches and pains with our carbohydrate rich diets. This is quite an interesting topic, which I'm eager to test, especially if it'll have a positive impact on my overall health and running performance.

A couple of days after reading this chapter, I happened to notice a few people mention Tim Noakes and his new low-carb diet on Twitter. Apparently Tim has been talking quite a bit about his new found confidence in high protein and fat diets. Recently, he's given a talk for Runner's World ZA, written articles for numerous publications (Discovery Newsletter and Modern Athlete and Southern Suburbs Tatler - I can't find this article, but it's discussed here) and was also interviewed on a top talk show station in South Africa: Radio 702 (listen to it here) in which he puts his hands up and says he got it wrong all those years ago. After some self-experimentation, he now believes we really should not be consuming anywhere near as many carbs as we've previously been advised by him and many other scientists, and instead we should be consuming high levels of protein and fat. In other words, there's some truth to the apparent madness that is the Atkins Diet. He even goes on to say "If you've got Lore of Running, tear out the section on nutrition" because he no longer believes this information is correct.

The second edition of his autobiography, Challenging Beliefs: Memoirs of a Career, due out in May, will go into more detail about his change of view. I've added it to my Kindle wishlist and will definitely be purchasing this when the 2nd edition becomes available. Until then, Tim recommends people read Gary Taubes’s books: Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do about It (Vintage) and The Dukan Diet.

I've always admired Tim Noakes for his expertise and now even more so. It takes a certain kind of person to put their hands up and say they got it wrong on a topic they've been promoting for years. You've really got to admire Tim Noakes for this.

Time to dig out that old copy of the Atkins Diet sitting on our bookcase.

259km: A New Monthly Record

2012-02-01T11:01:16+00:00

Yesterday's run saw me log my highest monthly mileage total of 259km...

I ran 259km in January 2012

My previous high was 252km in November 2011. Now the fact these two are quite close to each other - we could say right after each other as December doesn't really count as I was on holiday for most of the month - is no coincidence. Since September I've been experimenting with the Maximum Aerobic Function (MAF) training as promoted/devised by Phil Maffetone and I'm really enjoying it and starting to see results.

Essentially all my training is just a lot of long and slow running done at a specific heart rate. No interval workouts, no threshold runs, no tempo runs, no racing, no anything-that-would-over-stress-the-body running. I'm finding that I feel moderately tired after a long run, but not absolutely knackered. Best of all, I feel great the next day and I can easily take another long run without feeling the strain. Case in point, on 22 January I ran my longest long run in a very very long time (just over 22km in 2 hours) and I felt great the next day and ran just over 9.5km that day. If so inclined, I could probably easily run two moderately long runs in a day if I wanted.

I think I've also found a good training routine/pattern that my body seems to like: three high mileage weeks each with 5-6 runs, one of which is a long run, and one swimming session followed by one week low mileage with a swim. I've dropped the weight lifting sessions as I actually feel more knackered after these than after a long run. I now have Phil Maffetone's The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing and in here he recommends no weight training take place during the base building phase. Now I have the book, I'm also starting to do the monthly MAF tests properly, so we'll see in a couple of months exactly how much improvement I'm getting from this long-slow running.

So all in all, I'm really enjoying my running at the moment and I think I might be in for a bumper year in terms of mileage. Lets just hope the race times plummet too. The first test will be the Reading half-marathon on 1 April.

It's Official: Barefoot IS Best

2012-01-12T17:25:08+00:00

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is now official, barefoot is best. Well almost... if we do a bit of liberal interpretation ;-) . To quote Vivobarefoot's article (I've changed the link to point directly to the paper)...

Harvard Professor Daniel Lieberman has released his latest ground breaking research: "Foot Strike and Injury Rates in Endurance Runners: a retrospective study" which shows runners with a rearfoot strike have almost twice the rate of injury than those who forefoot strike, a characteristic found in skilled barefoot runners.
— IT’S OFFICIAL BAREFOOT IS BEST

Unfortunately, the paper is locked away behind a form that makes you buy it in order to read it, so I've not read the whole article yet, but the abstract gives us a good idea...

Purpose: This retrospective study tests if runners who habitually forefoot strike have different rates of injury than runners who habitually rearfoot strike.

Methods: We measured the strike characteristics of middle and long distance runners from a collegiate cross country team and quantified their history of injury, including the incidence and rate of specific injuries, the severity of each injury, and the rate of mild, moderate and severe injuries per mile run.

Results: Of the 52 runners studied, 36 (59%) primarily used a rearfoot strike and 16 (31%) primarily used a forefoot strike. Approximately 74% of runners experienced a moderate or severe injury each year, but those who habitually rearfoot strike had approximately twice the rate of repetitive stress injuries than individuals who habitually forefoot strike. Traumatic injury rates were not significantly different between the two groups. A generalized linear model showed that strike type, sex, race distance, and average miles per week each correlate significantly (p<0.01) with="" repetitive="" injury="" rates.="" conclusions:="" competitive="" cross="" country="" runners="" on="" a="" college="" team="" incur="" high="" rates,="" but="" who="" habitually="" rearfoot="" strike="" have="" significantly="" higher="" rates="" of="" stress="" than="" those="" mostly="" forefoot="" strike.="" this="" study="" does="" not="" test="" the="" causal="" bases="" for="" general="" difference.="" one="" hypothesis,="" which="" requires="" further="" research,="" is="" that="" absence="" marked="" impact="" peak="" in="" ground="" reaction="" force="" during="" compared="" to="" may="" contribute="" lower="" injuries="" habitual="" strikers.="" (c)2012the="" american="" sports="" medicine
— Foot Strike and Injury Rates in Endurance Runners: a retrospective study

The sample size isn't very big and it doesn't conclusively prove barefoot it better than shod running - barefoot isn't even mentioned - but if they can come to their conclusion from such a small sample, we can further extrapolate to say barefoot has got to be better as you will almost certainly land on your forefoot when running barefoot. It's hurts too much not to. :-D Now to see if I can get my hands on that paper.

Delta Park Parkrun: My First African Parkrun

2012-01-04T14:37:22+00:00

Over the Christmas holidays, I was compelled (a visit was due anyway) to return to sunny South Africa for the first time in five years - my first Christmas back in SA in 7 years - by my cousin's desire to marry a gun-toting children's pastor (lovely chap).

As part of my holiday back home, I decided I'd venture out to see what South Africa's first and only (at the moment) parkrun was like. It'd been a very very very long time since I last ran in South Africa, let alone raced, and from the one other run I'd had in Jo'burg during my hols, a gentle 10k, I knew it would be a toughie.

So nice and early on Christmas eve, I bundled my wife into the car and we headed down to Delta Park for a quick spin round the park (me - my wife doesn't run). We got there with about half an hour to spare so I could warm up and introduce myself to the organiser - the one and only, Bruce Fordyce. During the intros it came to light there were quite a few of us "foreign" bods there. There was me, another chap from Cambridge (also a Saffer) and 3 Kiwis, all doing our first SA parkrun. It was also a much larger turn out than expected with 24 people, which isn't bad considering up until that point the record had been 31 with absolutely no publicity.

Around about 9am we all gathered for a photo...

The skinny guy to my left blitzed round in 17:10

... and set off for what is probably the toughest parkrun you'll encounter. Due to Delta Park's location and the general geography of Johannesburg, hills are unavoidable, and boy is this a hilly run. Thankfully it's only a single-lapper (I prefer single lap runs) scenic run with a good mix of trails, grass and tar. I've only done the Reading and the Delta Park parkruns (note to self: I really must aim to do other parkruns this year) and I definitely prefer the Delta Park run.

A combination of the altitude, hills and varied terrain saw me finish in 7th place in a rather slow time of 21:43. You'd be amazed how much of an impact altitude has on your running performance - it's really hard work running at about 1600m above sea level, especially up hill, after only training at sea level for several years.

Unfortunately, things didn't go well for everyone...

Perhaps Aristotle was correct or perhaps it's because we South Africans are still bitter about the rugby World Cup but we somehow contrived to welcome our All Black friends by planting a snake (suspected Rinkhals- spitting cobra) in the first 300 metres of open grassland. A few minutes after we had set off Kelly hobbled back with a bite above her ankle.
Kelly was rushed off to hospital where she was treated and discharged a couple of hours later. The doctors were not entirely convinced that she had suffered a snake bite-. And we comforted ourselves by remembering that many venomous snakes are extremely reluctant to exhaust their poison in defense prefering to save venom for their prey. In other words they bite often but don't expel poison. The Rinkhals much prefers fat rats, toads and other snakes to skinny Kiwis.
— Christmas Eve 2011 Race Report

You'll never get that kind of excitement and action at a parkrun in the UK.

Sadly, I didn't get the chance to run another parkrun whilst in SA, but Bruce plans on putting the marketing engine into full swing this year to get the word out that parkrun has made it to SA and needs runners. If all goes well, parkruns will be sprouting up all over South Africa in the next few years.

I wish them the best of luck and will definitely be bringing my barcode with me when I next visit South Africa.

Tackling The 10 Myths Of Barefoot Running

2012-01-04T13:38:17+00:00

Great and well balanced article from Podiatry Today busting the myths commonly associated with barefoot running.