Barefoot Runner

Way back in February, I was approached by Jana Witt, a Science Communication student at the University of the West of England asking if I minded answering a few questions for an article she was writing for their student newspaper - The Western Eye - (Jana is science correspondent) inspired by the recently published Liberman paper.

Being the nice person that I am, and eager to promote barefoot running, I gladly answered Jana's questions. I think I went a little overboard on some of my answers as I would have smashed Jana's article word limit had she published my responses verbatim, but she got the gist of my answers and put together a great short article for her readers which was published in the March 2010 edition (PDF download here if you want to read the whole paper).

Jana has kindly provided a copy of just the article in JPG and PDF formats for you to read too (2 months ago: I completely forgot to publish this back then, sorry Jana).

Enjoy.

Following on from my review of the VivoBarefoot Aqua shoes by Terra Plana, I've been kindly sent a pair of the much talked about VivoBarefoot Evo running shoes for review and critique and fast approaching two months after receiving them (I've been a busy boy) I'm finally getting around to documenting my experience.

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Monday night's episode of Health Check (listen here) on the BBC World Service covers the topic of barefoot running with the reporter taking a quick spin barefoot round a track (and surprises herself) and then follows up with an interview with Daniel Lieberman in which he briefly covers what he discusses in his recent paper. What is quite impressive is just how much coverage barefoot running gets in one programme: over 11 minutes of a 28 minute programme. Impressive.

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If you're a regular reader of Runner's World in the UK, you'll probably have noticed an article in last month's (April - why do magazines come out a month earlier than they're dated?) edition titled "The Naked Truth About Barefoot Running" in which I've been quoted. Whilst it's great to see barefoot running getting an article in Runner's World, I can't say I'm too impressed with the overall slant of the article nor some of the points and quotes made.

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I've been using Fetcheveryone to log all my running since July 2009 and overall I'm quite pleased with it. I recently discovered dailymile and it certainly looks very pretty (lots of Web2.0rhea) but I'm not convinced by the whole idea of "social training" or whatever they want to call it nor dailymile's overall functionality and behaviour. It seems lacking and buggy.

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Seeing is believing...

Well, almost. Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, Siraj Gena is indeed barefoot as he crosses the line, however he didn't run the whole race barefoot, just the last 500m or so.

As a tribute to Abebe Bikila and to honour the 50th anniversary of his Olympic win in 1960 in Rome, the Rome Marathon offered a €5000 bonus to both the men's and women's winners today if they took off their shoes and socks and run the last 300m of the race barefoot. The winners would also get 20 seconds off their official finish time to compensate for the time lost to taking off their shoes.

With the race in the bag by the 40th kilometer, Siraj fittingly paid his tribute and took off his shoes and pocketed a little extra cash.

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 previous longest barefoot run, I thought it best to head back home.

When I got home, I sync'd up my Garmin Forerunner 405CX (note to self, I really should write about my new toy some time) with Garmin Connect (leaves a lot to be desired, but it happens automatically) and my FetchEveryone account. Whilst checking my log on FetchEveryone I noticed I'd managed to tick off two of my goals this week:

• 20km per week in training completely barefoot
• 10km long training run

I'm quite chuffed with this and believe it's all down to switching to ONLY running barefoot since the beginning of February. This has definitely allowed me to run further and with more ease than when switching between Vibrams and barefoot.

Oh yes, on a side note: if you want to check your barefoot form, head down to Thames Valley Park. The grassy bit along the Thames where they do the Reading Park Run (on my todo list) is very wet and soggy in places. You'll very easily be able to tell if your pushing off or landing incorrectly as your feet slip and slosh through all the mud . On the plus side, I think it's quite a magical feeling feeling the mud squelch between my toes.