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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Interesting article on the benefits of long-term physical activity on ageing. I like the bit on intelligence levels too. Explains a lot in my case

Same runner, same day, with no instruction given in between videos.

Whilst this lady's barefoot form isn't brilliant in the first place (better example of good barefoot form

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