Barefoot Runner

I've just attempted to get my hands on Michael Sandler's book "Barefoot Running: How to Run Light and Free by Getting in Touch with the Earth" and it's proving to be a bit of a mission, unless my money tree starts growing, and quickly.

The book has just been released and the reviews of the book are starting to popup all over the barefoot and minimalist running websites. I consider myself to be a seasoned barefoot runner now, but I'm eager to have a read through this book to see how closely my experience has been to that of the author's and also to see if I've missed some "magic trick" or other little useful snippet that would help improve my barefoot running.

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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.

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 (when I'm not cramming in 6 hours of solid work in the morning) travelling to and from Oxford (I live 35 miles away in Reading) every day to see my little one.

Hopefully, I'll get a chance to read it in the next few days and post my own opinions on it. From the little bit I've read in various locations, my initial thoughts are: "It's about bloody time some one published a modern paper detailing one/some of the benefits of barefoot running" and "I told you so", but this is only based on second hand information.

Time for a beer, dinner, relaxation, and maybe some reading of this study on my iPod Touch instead of TV tonight, though I do now have a two rather interesting books to read too: Brain Training For Runners (I love subjects involving using the brain to better our lives - think Tony Buzan) and Why We Run. Naturally, both will get a review here once I'm done with them.

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.

Previously when running in shoes, I might catch a glimpse of a one of these animals in the distance and then watch then run off. Now, when running barefoot or in my Vibrams, I find I can get very close before they hear me and get a good look before they dash off. Sometimes the animal doesn't even dash off, but instead stops and watches me like I'm the wild animal - this has happened on numerous occasions with deer.

In fact, it's now quite common for me to get within a few meters of a squirrels before they hear me, and even then they don't bolt like they used to. Most of them move slightly out of my way and then turn and watch my feet just like humans do, and probably with the same thought crossing their mind - Crazy fool!!!

I really enjoy the encounters I now make with the best of Britain's wildlife, and it's all thanks to getting rid of the shoes.

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.

Just bung in the temperature, wind speed, and sky conditions, then add how you prefer to feel when you run (cool, in-between, warm) and it'll suggest what you should wear. It's interesting to note, it doesn't recommend particular shoes, so these must be optional

On the face of it, this appears to be a another silly web application, however for those new to running, the added stress of worrying about what to wear could be the deciding factor between going for that run, and not.

Are we hardwired to run efficiently, and NOT in the way the shoe companies think we should? I think these two videos prove we may well be.

First off, the kids. They haven't had a chance to be manipulated by fancy running shoes and as we can see from this video, POSE/Chi/Evolution running are all really stating what we already know before we even know we know it...

Now for something mentioned in Christopher McDougall's book "Born to Run" (my review) ... the ability of humans to literally run their prey to death in the "persistence hunt".

Whilst these aren't barefoot specific, the mechanics enforced by barefoot/minimalist running are re-enforced in these videos.

I'm a subscriber to Barefoot Ted's huaraches Google Group, and the other day one of the members started a thread about funny comments and retorts which I thought I'd share in summary:

OrionFyre:

I got stopped by a cop who pulled up along side me to see if I was OK.
"why do you ask?" I say.
"Because you're not wearing shoes..." he replies
I look down at my feet with a look of surprise. "Oh shit! they must have fallen off."
I stand upright and look back the way I had came covering my eyes from the suns glare. In the corner of my eye I see the cop turn around in the car and look back.
"dammit." I mumble aloud
"I knew I should have tied them tighter."

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