Sometimes I think about barefoot running

I think about barefoot running a lot and yet I think about it hardly at all. This might seem a paradox (or just plain incoherence), but it isn’t. Really it isn’t.

When out running it is an irrelevance. I wear cushioned shoes¹ and have no issues with them. My mind is elsewhere. If I have to think about my feet I know a nerve is signalling me that something is wrong - and I don’t want that. Most of the time that doesn’t happen, and my mind can ramble and jump around without constraint. I have no great desire to concentrate over hard on the mechanics of what I'm doing and certainly don’t want to be the centipede who is immobilised because he can’t remember which leg moves next. However,  when reading or thinking about running in the abstract, I am fascinated by the subject. It raises questions about whether there is or is not a correct way to run or whether the physiology of each individual dictates their form. It is also an interesting example of how ideas grow from being the preoccupation of a few to gaining wider acceptance and how a minority with strong convictions can appear to dominate an argument but not necessarily change behaviour (the majority of runners still have quite a lot of cushioning on their shoes). Above all though it shows how little real evidence we really have but nevertheless how many people are convinced they know they are right.

I think barefoot running became a hot topic because it entwines two strands of thought that are powerfully attractive for most runners. The first is romantic and conjures up images of distant ancestors and how they evolved over the millennia evolved and is part of a common yearning to get back to nature. The second is the claim that it lessens the risk of injury (is there a runner alive who would not want to reduce the risk of being injured again?). When these ideas are woven into a compelling narrative they are close to irresistible. This happened in Christopher McDougall’s huge best seller Born to Run, which also contained the exoticism of a remote Mexican tribe capable of amazing feats of endurance, a mysterious man of the wilds, maverick American individualist, and the suspense of a race.  No wonder it captured the imagination of so many people. For normal runners though there was the story of the author himself who, within the book, represents everyman. He was a runner so injury prone  he had more or less abandoned the sport but through learning to run barefoot he was able to come back, better and stronger than ever. He is a  compelling example.

With the success of the book the trickle of articles about barefoot running became a strong flowing river. It is worth recalling though that before 2009 (when Born to Run was published) there had been growing interest in the potential benefits of changing running form to land on the forefoot/midfoot. Methods such as POSE or Chi Running frequently discussed on running forums and the Vibram Five Fingers had already been adopted by runners (they were originally deigned as yachting shoes), so the ground was well prepared the upsurge in interest. However the big shoe manufacturers were slow to respond. Perhaps they felt they had too much invested in the concept of protection and pronation control or that it would never be a big enough market to worry about. For whatever reason they left a gap for other companies to fill but that now seems to have changed and the traditional running brands are moving in, but some with more enthusiasm than others.

So that gives me four topics to think about when I think of barefoot running: romancing of the Palaeolithic runner; injury prevention; the response of sport shoe manufacturers; and the evangelical mindset of some proponents of barefoot running. I will write about each of them in future posts.

¹ If I am going to write about barefoot running I should perhaps declare my own practice. I tend to land midfoot. It is not the result of a conscious decision - it just happened that way.I am not, however,  a barefoot runner. I like some cushioning and a bit of a heel but I can't be doing with a huge, big heel as they get in the way. For me a benefit of the current trend is that there are now more shoes with less drop. I do however wear minimalist shoes, occasionally, when I am on the treadmill, doing my speed (don't laugh at the back) training.

The Tarahumara and a Lost Opportunity

Tarahumara Runners. Souce Norawas de Raramuri

The next day we played a very fierce game of volleyball with the nuns, really serious, they almost killed us. I've played volleyball but this was like all their sexual aggression coming out.

I picture the nuns in full garb jumping, smashing and aggressively intimidating their opponents puts a smile on my face. Maybe I am remembering the leaping nuns of the order of St Beryl but nevertheless the image deserves a place in my collection of sporting descriptions.

The quote is from the photographer David Montgomery who accompanied Norman Lewis on a journey to Mexico to write about the Huichol tribe and comes from the biography Norman Lewis by Julian Evans. Norman Lewis was one of the great travel writers of the Twentieth Century whose subjects included the Mafia in Sicily and the the VietCong as well as the tribal societies of South America.

One of the tantalising what-ifs of our knowledge of Mexican Indians is that in the 1970s he heard about a tribe who ran up mountains and wanted to make contact. Unfortunately because it was a serendipitous idea and he did not have enough time to wait, he never found them. I assume this tribe were the Tarahumara, recently made famous in Christopher McDougal's book Born to Run.

Over the past couple of years Born to Run has been a best seller and a phenomenon in the running world, given huge impetus to the barefoot running movement. One would therefore assume that Norman Lewis's failure to meet-up the tribe was unimportant because Christopher McDougal has now done the job. But I do not feel that; I regret the lost opportunity.

The reason is mainly one of style and sharpness of perception, i.e. the core of the writers craft. Although I am interested in the subject of 'Born to Run' I have not finished it as I could not get past its hyperbolic style and the desperate straining for similes. An example: early on he described watching a video of his own running -

"In my mind's eye, I'm light and quick as a Navajo on the hunt. the guy on the screen, however, was a Frankenstein's monster trying to tango. I was bobbing around so much my head was disappearing from the top of the frame. My arms were slashing back and forth like an ump calling a player safe at the plate, whist my size 13s clumped down so heavily it sounded like the video had a bongo backbeat."

I read it and thought "No! You may not have been elegant but you were not at all like that". The odd bit of overindulgence I can accept and might even enjoy but in this book every paragraph was the same and all the time I was pushing against it.

Towards the end of his career Norman Lewis worried about the "attentioncalling" style of the new generation of travel writers represented by Paul Theroux. I don't know what he would think now, now that the general level of volume has been cranked up to 11.

Norman Lewis's prose was not simple but his style was modest and underplayed, as if it had faith in the extra ordinariness of what he was describing. I wish Christopher McDougall had had the same faith. The Tarahumara are certainly a extraordinary tribe.

I need to put my squeamishness aside and finish the book. However I can still regret that story was not written by  Norman Lewis 30 years ago.

Juneathon 2011 Day 19: New shoes

2011 Streak Day 170/365: Run - 2.8 miles, Time - 26min 26sec, Weather - changeable

In yesterday's post I mentioned one of the great things about running in that you can always try things out, measure the results, and either carry on or abandon. You can make experiments, without too much danger, to freshen-up what you are doing, or with the hope of a breakthrough.

The phrase from George Sheehan that 'you are an experiment of one', is something to be constantly born in mind.

In that spirit I thought I would try running in minimalist shoes.

Barefoot running may be a fashionable topic but the idea of running totally barefoot on the asphalt and pavements of Hemel is something I would fear rather than welcome. So the answer is a pair of minimal shoes with a flat and flexible sole to protect the foot  - in effect a move towards barefoot running. 

These are my new shoes - Saucony's Hattari, their first attempt at zero drop, and today was my first run.

It is too early to say how it will work out. I will need more sessions before I can come to any conclusion about their virtues or whether I will move away from more cushioned trainers. My instinct is that I won't - but we will see.

The thing I can say though is that there was no feeling of revelation, no feeling of release, no feeling that this is the way we were meant to run. I did not feel freer and more natural. This could be because I did not have to change my running style very much - I have always landed on my midfoot/forefoot.

The slight adjustment that had to be made was the movement of the heel, which instead of being supported at a slight angle, fell-back flat to the ground. I actually noticed this lack of support and the run felt harder as a result. The calves also felt as if they had done more work.

But we will see. I will use them for a run a week, to get used to them and then make a judgement

Juneathon 2011 Day 8: Barefoot Running and Minimalist Shoes

2011 Streak Day 158/365: Run - 4.09 miles, Time - 36min 17sec, Weather - Constable's clouds

Part 1 - After a preamble I give a link to all you need to know about barefoot running

I have a slightly perverse streak: as soon as something becomes fashionable, or widely talked about, I will shun it. I will put on my blinkers and deliberately look the other way, as if to say 'I am not swayed by the crowd, I am not mindlessly following the herd'. As if anyone was noticing or anybody cared.

It is of course nonsense and something one is meant to grow out of at the age of 20 but it is still there inside me like a tiny piece of shrapnel from one of any number of cultural wars. It also goes against my underlying philosophy, which is a form of Enlightenment empiricism. I ought to look at everything with an open mind, examine evidence, and then draw conclusions but sometimes I forget that.

I am especially suspicious of anything with evangelical adherents, which is why I instinctively distrusted POSE: not because I don't think it has good things to say about running form but because I cannot believe there is only one way to run, one style which suites everybody.

In fact my reactions are not against things that are popular they are against things that feel like a cult. And POSE felt like a cult

However I am not so resistant to barefoot running, and the move towards more minimal shoes, because it is not so prescriptive. In fact it is something I have always been interested in because I naturally land on my forefoot/midfoot. Against all my normal instincts I am actually pleased it has become a fashionable topic of conversation in the running world.

The attention is at-last waking-up the major manufacturers who are begining to think about shoes for forefoot striking. This could lead to some interesting innovations. Saucony are the first of the main stream companies out of the blocks with the Hattori. It will be interesting to see how it does. In fact I am so interested I have just ordered a pair. In due course I will write about how I get on.

In the meantime if anybody wants to read about the current knowledge about barefoot running. I can recommend this post from the Science of Sport blog.

Part 2 - The run

In many ways todays run was similar to yesterdays. The pace was similar as was the route. However there was a huge difference in my mood. I went out feeling content  and returned just as happy.

It was a nice run but nothing much happened.

Part 3 - The picture

My pictures of flowers tend to be a fall back when I haven't been  very far (my run was round a park) but nevertheless I am endlessly fascinated by both the patterns of the flowers and the combinations you see.

Barefoot Running Has Been Getting Attention

When did running form become such a hot topic?

Over the past few months arcane debates within the running community about forefoot vs. heel strike, Pose, barefoot running, minimal shoes have seeped into the mainstream media:

On John Stewart's Daily Show there was an interview with Christopher McDougall author of 'Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen' As well as describing the incredible feats of endurance of the Tarahumara tribe of Mexico, it describes the effect on him of following their ways and abandoning his hitech trainers. Before he could manage only limited mileage before injury, whereas now he is injury free.

The book seems to have caught on and there have been a number of articles about it including this nice piece on the New York Times website The Roving Runner Goes Barefoot, which includes a video of the journalist going for a barefoot run with Christopher McDougall.

Of course, for all of us, and especially the press, products are a major focus of attention, so there have been many lifestyle/living features on
Vibram Fivefinger shoes and the fact that these shoes have been more successful than the manufacturer believed possible (they were originally designed for boating) shows a movement is developing.

Even so I was surprised when barefoot running was a topic on drivetime radio. But I don't know whether this means it is going mainstream or whether it is seen as one of those quirky stories put in to amuse (probably the latter). The trigger was research published in Nature on the different forces experienced when running barefoot as opposed to shod. They interviewed the lead author Daniel Lieberman and mostly it was fairly jokey dwelling on things like the practical problems of running barefoot, such as dog poo. However when the interviewer tried to summarise the research as showing that barefoot running lead to fewer injuries, Lieberman was very clear in stating that it showed no such thing as it merely showed the different forces at play. He did not want to stretch the evidence too far but as the press tend to rewrite press agency material and as
Reuters led the story with "Runners who eschew shoes may be less likely to do serious injury to their feet", that might be a difficult line to hold.

However what he said was interesting as this video shows:



However it is very easy to get carried away with such ideas.

As a corrective I would like to offer this excellent article on running form: an interview with Jay Dicharry, which plays down the importance of where the foot lands.

Running Barefoot - But Not On A Treadmill

This is a very small story, just an application of 'rules is rules', but it is interesting in the way shows how things are justified and how fragments of ideas can float around.

It really started with my recent post about running styles and the realisation that although I naturally midfoot/forefoot strike and I have in the past discovered the pleasure of running barefoot, I spend all my time in standard, neutral, cushioned shoes. I was thinking about this when I was pushing some weights and looking at other people of the treadmills. There was quite a lot of heavy thumping and some of the runners really slapped their feet down and my thoughts wandered to what it is that makes some people lighter on their feet than others. It has nothing to do with actual bodyweight, as the person with the loudest foot strike was quite slightly built, but must have something to do with trying to force things too hard. The essence of good style I thought must be to move along the surface as lightly as possible not to drive the feet into the ground.

I then thought it would be fun to try a little barefoot running so I left my shoes by the side of the treadmill and started running just wearing very lightweight socks . I had forgotten how good it is to feel the foot moving freely - the way the forefoot spreads-out when it lands and then how the heel lightly touches the surface before it is lifted-off. I was quite enjoying myself, feeling a little bit looser and playing about running at different speeds, when one of the members of staff came over and told me to stop as it was mandatory to run in trainers.

"Why?" I asked
"Health and safety" was the reply
"What am I being protected from?"
"Things falling on your feet and you could catch your socks and be thrown off the machine."

But I think he was a bit embarrassed about these reasons and his heart was not into trying to describe the scenarios where these things might happen. He then shifted ground and suggested that running barefoot was not good for you.

I was both a little shocked and really interested by this because he was one of the trainers whose job is to advise on exercise. He ought to know better or at least have some good reasons to back up such a statement. He didn't and so I said a little about how you absorbed the forces when you landed on your forefoot and how lots of people think it is a good way to run.

"Ah forefoot running. That's Pose running and a bit different" he said
"No, all Pose runners land on their forefoot but not all forefoot runners are Pose runners."

This is really quite interesting because it shows the power of a brand name and the way it can become fixed in the mind of someone who only has a peripherally interest in the subject. I am sure that this trainer was expert in all of the machines in the gym, weight training and general fitness regimes but probably for him running is only another form of cardio vascular exercise. If so he would not pay close attention to issues within the running community but he would be aware of things that impinged on the fitness industry , so obviously Pose has a profile and has made some impact. It is more widely known than I thought. it is amazing how things can ripple out.

Anyway we started to talk a little about running styles but that was not really the point so we reverted to the main topic of me running without shoes.

I had no problems with stopping. The man was doing his job and I had no desire to give him a hard time or mount any sort of high horse. It is one of the rules of the gym that you have to wear appropriate footwear at all times (probably to stop people exercising in boots or flip flops) and that is all there is to it.

I wonder though about the thinking behind such rules. Probably it is something along the lines of:

Trainers are designed to cushion the impact of running
Therefore they are protective
We need to do everything we can to protect our customers from injury
Therefore protective footwear must be worn.

The logic might be totally flawed but at least it is coherent in an institutional sort of way.

Luckily outdoors none of this matters and running is not about thinking in an institutional way. It is about listening to the best advice you can find, hearing from other peoples experiences and then trying things out for yourself. It is about not being proscriptive.