I received the following email today from Ian Masri at University College London (UCL) and thought I'd post it here for anyone who is interested...

Title of Project: Injury rate in barefoot and minimal footwear runners preparing for the London 2013 Marathon
This study has been approved by the UCL Research Ethics Committee (Project ID Number): 4252/001

Name: Ian Masri
Contact Details: rmhkima@live.ucl.ac.uk

We would like to invite all runners from the age of 18 years and above, who are taking part in the 2013 Virgin London Marathon and are training for it either barefoot or in minimalist footwear, to participate in this research project.

Details of Study: If you wish to participate please reply to rmhkima@live.ucl.ac.uk stating you wish to participate in Injury rate in barefoot and minimal footwear runners preparing for the London 2013 Marathon and an initial questionnaire will be sent to you with a sample copy of the weekly running diary.

This study is designed to look at the location, type of injuries as well as their rates that occur in runners who are training for the 2013 Virgin London Marathon barefoot and/or in minimalist footwear. The study will start in January 2013 and carry on until the week of the marathon (21st April 2013). The data collected will hopefully give a better understanding of whether this type of running has fewer injury rates than conventional heel strike running (shod), and whether running barefoot or in minimalist footwear has a similar injury rate. This data may also help improve the way people are taught to run barefoot and/or in minimalist footwear.

If any of your members are interested in participating in the study please have them email us for further information.

As I didn't get a ballot place, I can't take part, but if you did and meet the above criteria, contact Ian and offer up your feet and training logs.

BBC1 broadcast an very interesting episode of Panorama last night...

The Truth About Sports Products

As many of us try to get fitter in this Olympic summer, Panorama investigates the sports products that promise to boost your performance. Are those pricey trainers worth the money? Can sports drinks really help you work out for longer? Are protein shakes any more effective at honing the physique than ordinary food?

With exclusive access to the findings from a unique study by the British Medical Journal and Oxford University, reporter Shelley Jofre tests the science behind the bold advertising claims made by some of sport's biggest brands.
— The Truth About Sports Products

A very interesting programme that concentrated on the marketing claims sports supplement, drink and shoe manufacturers make about how wonderful and amazing their products are and how they'll make you so much better at your sport, and the scientific evidence to support these claims.

As you can expect, pretty much everything lacked any relevant scientific backing to go with the sensational claims with some companies using very dubious studies to try and back their claims. Essentially the programme revealed that these companies have come up with very clever ways to make you, the average Joe Schmoe, pay a lot of money for sugar, salt and water and who knows what else without any real good reason. These supplements and drinks have very little impact on the average person's performance and recovery.

They also covered the injury prevention claims made by running shoe manufacturers and, as a barefoot running fan, you'll know they came up with nothing. To try and make a balanced argument, they mentioned barefoot running and even illustrated how running barefoot reduces impact and thus acknowledged Daniel Lieberman's research

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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)...

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I've been following and instilling the 10% rule for years for people starting out, especially when it comes to barefoot running, but I've always stated that this shouldn't be treated as a hard-and-fast rule. Looks like research is on the way to confirm that this doesn't really make much difference toward preventing injury. I think it should still be followed when starting barefoot running: not for injury prevention, but to acclimatise your feet to the new sensations.

Are you a runner - barefoot isn't essential? Are you a stickler for recording your training runs? Are you interested in helping a PhD student with her studies in the field of running injury causes and prevention? Keen on being a guinea pig in the name of science doing what you love? Fancy showing the world that barefoot running is good for you? Well, then drop Jenny Perkins at the University of Bath an email and offer your services.

To quote the article...

A University of Bath researcher is looking for keen runners to keep an online diary of their training habits and injuries, to help find out how they can reduce common running injuries.

PhD student Jenny Perkins, from the University’s Department for Health, will analyse the information to look at links between the type of training runners are doing, distance, age and injury.

She hopes to be able to tell runners what they can do to reduce their risk of injury, such as shin splints, back problems and knee pain.

Jenny is looking to recruit at least 1,000 volunteers from across the UK to the study, to log their training and injuries into a free online training diary over 12 months.

Runners of any ability are invited to take part if they are doing a minimum of three hours of running per week. Participants must be UK residents and aged over 18 years of age.

There is no upper age limit to the study and Jenny is particularly interested to find out about age-related differences in injury and training habits.

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Wow!! Apparently sugar has been found to decrease blood levels of testosterone by as much as 25% in perfectly healthy men. Could this explain why obese men get moobs? This is definitely one to consider if you're trying to lose weight, build muscle or have kids. I suspect this may be old new in the drug-taking-elite "athletes" world though.

I'm not planning on running a marathon in a long time, but a recent paper - Metabolic Factors Limiting Performance in Marathon Runners by Benjamin Rapoport - may prove quite useful to those who do or when I do finally get around to running another marathon.

In short, Rapoport has devised a series of calculations that can be used to help you optimize your carbohydrate consumption and race pace to achieve a maximal-for-you performance over the full marathon distance. A brief explanation can be found in this Runner's World article

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In a word: Nope. The US Military has just finished a large study only to conclude: wearing the “right” shoes for their particular foot shape had increased trainees’ chances of being hurt. From the article, it looks like quite a few studies on the effects of shoes on injury prevention and cause are starting to come to light.

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

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