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.

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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Following on from my post about whether Peter should start with shoes and then transition to barefoot, or start barefoot from the go, I stumbled upon an article - The Barefoot Route - about running barefoot in which the following useful bit of advice is given on starting out...

According to exercise physiologist and Olympic marathoner Pete Pfitzinger, the key to starting out is to go slowly. He advises walking barefoot for a few weeks to toughen up the skin on the bottom of the foot as well as the muscles in the ankles and feet. Once you are ready to run, start with a mere five minutes, increasing slowly and running barefoot every couple of days. From there, build to up to 20 minutes over a month. After a few weeks of this, the feet and ankles will be stronger, thus reducing the risk of injury. Possible places to train include sandy beaches and golf courses.

The barefoot running technique has been described as falling forward. It has also been described as gently kissing the ground with the balls of your feet. If you need one more concept to meditate on while running barefoot, imagine that a log is lying across the path in front of you; you don’t want to kick the front of the log with your toes. You want to step over the log with each step, keeping your knee bent and placing the ball of your foot immediately behind the log as your chest moves over the top of it.

The article is a good read and provides some useful information and answers some questions people have about the thought of running barefoot My favourite question answered is...

“What do you use for arch support?” some might ask. “My arch,” is probably usually the first answer that pops out of the mouth of die-hard barefooters.

Damn right. That's what it's there for . Time for another barefoot run for me.

Oh, and if you think you get strange looks running with Vibrams, you should see the looks you get when running completely kaalvoet.

A good article on the correlation of running injuries and the super-dooper high tech shoes on the market.

Athletic Footwear and Running Injuries

Everything you and I always believed about running shoes and running injuries may be wrong! Here's the scoop: The modern running shoe itself may be the major cause of running injuries! Stated another way, the modern running shoe, presently thought of a protective device, should be reclassified as a "health hazard".

It's a couple of years old, but still some useful and valid information here.