Barefoot Runner

Look what I got today (thank-you Canoe Inc). Come on everyone, I want to hear you say "Ooooooo". I've not taken them for a spin yet, but initial impressions are good. I'll write up a full review once I've had a chance to take them out for a nice long run.

It's a glorious day in the south of the UK today. It's dry and sunny with a slight cool breeze blowing. I'd planned on going for a long run later today once the roads had warmed up a bit, but when I saw how gorgeous it was outside, I couldn't hold myself back and headed out a little earlier than planned.

What a fantastic run. I'd originally planned on only running about 8km, but before I knew it I'd already clocked up 6km and was about 4km from home. I could probably have carried on further, but given 8km was my...

Well folks, I'm back online and trying to get back into the groove again. I technically wasn't completely offline, just lacking the motivation to write or get involved due to recent events on the home front. Sadly, February has been a very tough month for my wife and I: our baby daughter, Lara, unfortunately didn't make it through the open heart surgery she had to undergo in order to rectify two congenital heart defects. I'm not going to go into the details here but if you're interested, I will be posting a series of posts, building up to my daughter's funeral on 12 March, on my main site. Suffice to say we were devastated and completely knocked for six by this, even though we'd known about the heart condition before she was born. The loss of a child is something you really can't prepare yourself for no matter how much forewarning you received.

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I've finally managed to get my hands on The Lieberman "letter": Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot versus shod runners reported in January's edition of Nature and I've read through it, the accompanying Harvard site and a lot of the reviews other people have made, and here are my observations.

First and foremost, I believe this paper has been over-hyped and misinterpreted (possibly deliberately as it makes "good news") in a big way. I think the main reason for this is it's the first major research paper in years that actually involves comparisons between barefoot and shod runners. There have been other recent studies that have documented the merits of different foot strikes (fore/mid/heel), but none have made the comparison between barefoot and shod runners. There's also the added attention barefoot running is currently enjoying thanks to Christopher McDougall's book: Born to Run (my review).

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Just a quick note to say, no, I've not been sleeping under a rock (sleep, what's that?). Yes, I've heard about the Lieberman Paper and seen/heard the BBC news article and all the other summaries and opinions cropping up all over the net since it was released earlier this week, I've just not had the chance to actually sit down and read it, or more specifically the Harvard site setup for it, yet.

The thing is my wife and I have just had our first baby and sadly she's got a heart condition, so I've spent most of my free time...

I've just popped out for a short run and thought I'd document it for everyone to share.

First, the planned route:

It's recently occurred to me that there is another benefit to barefoot/minimalist running and that's the wildlife encounters that I now get to experience.

I live in the UK, so I'm not going to be encountering any "cool" wildlife like lions, tigers, bears and wild dogs, but rather the more timid animals like squirrels, foxes, deer and birds. Whilst timid, these guys shouldn't be snubbed as they tend to hear you long before you see them and they're long gone by the time you get within smelling distance.

If "run regularly" is on your tentative list of New Year's resolutions, you may find Runner's World's (US) What Should I Wear? calculator may help you pick appropriate attire.

Well folks, midnight and next year is fast approaching so I thought I'd give a little summary of the year just past and a little glimpse of what to expect from me next year.

I started this year off NOT running at all, but actually rowing, following a suspected metatarsal stress fracture I picked up at the end of last year. Well in retrospect, I don't think it was a stress fracture at all, rather I believe it was just the muscles and tendons in my feet telling me that I was taking things too fast too soon.