Barefoot

I've had an epiphany.

I need to write more on this blog?

Make that two epiphanies. The epiphany of which I speak was this: The modern running shoe is completely unnecessary.

As you would expect from such an admirable 21st-century dweller as myself, the events leading up to this epiphany involved much interaction with my friend the internet. As I was flipping through the internet one day during class-as I am wont to do- I came across an article by someone who, a few years ago, was asking himself the same question I was: why does my foot hurt?

Luckily, that person was also a journalist and had written an entire book on just that subject. I immediately started bugging my dad to order Christopher McDougall's Born to Run, and, while waiting for the book to arrive, looked up everything I could on the author and the book. I'll spare you the long journey through the maze of internet links that I followed, but eventually, I stumbled upon an entire online tribe of barefoot runners. And this tribe loved to write. Imagine the running world's version of Evangelical Christians.

To be honest, I had heard about barefoot running before, but I hadn't taken it very seriously. My friend Rob (who always seems to be ahead of the curve) bought some Nike Frees this past summer for cross country, after the he and I did a 4-miler barefoot. (Doing 4 miles for your first barefoot run, I now know, is a classic example of TMTS- too much too soon.) I ended up with shin splints on both legs and a continued skepticism of running barefoot.

Fast forward a few months, to me struggling down my usual running route in Asics GT-2140's (cushiony, stable, gel-enhanced) with a whole host of running injuries I'd never had before, (pain on the top of both feet, outside my right ankle, the bottom of my left foot...) and generally feeling like crap. At this point, I was pretty open to any new ideas. So, the day I re-discovered barefoot running, I put on my most beat-up shoes and went on a short 3-miler, trying to run like the barefoot runners I'd seen online. With short, quick strides and a forefoot landing instead of the heel strike I'd been using before, I flew through the 3 miles without feeling any of the injuries I'd been bothered with. After I made it home, I took of my shoes and went out for another run. It felt even better than with the shoes. By the end of the day, I was totally converted.

But why? Why are modern running shoes making us a nation of injured runners?

It started in 1972 with a running shoe company called Blue Ribbon Sports, which you might know as Nike. When its founder, Bill Bowerman, wrote a book called Jogging in the early sixties, he included a passage saying that if you could lengthen your stride in front of you, landing on your heel, you could grab some extra distance per step, which he thought would be "less tiring". After the book became a hit, Bowerman designed a running shoe that would let you do just that: lengthen your stride and heel strike. Now that's some good marketing.

Besides letting you heel strike, the heel on modern running shoes basically shrinks your Achilles tendon (because your heel doesn't ever need to stretch down to the ground), while the cushioning, which does the job that the natural roll of your feet would do were you barefoot, atrophies your foot muscles.

I'll pause here for the runners to read the last sentence again. Natural roll of the foot. The fancy word is pronation. The specialty running store people have been talking about your pronation as if it's a biomechanical error, but in reality, it's just the way that your foot is supposed to land. Think about it like this: if the little cousin you were babysitting was running out into the road and you had to sprint barefoot out to stop here, how would each step look like? You'd be landing on the outside of your forefoot, rolling inwards, and pushing off. The people at Playmakers would be wincing, but the fact is that that's how nearly everyone in the world's feet naturally land. Pronation is necessary. Overpronation, or rolling in from the outside of the heel to the inside of the forefoot (and the problem that shoes like my old Asics were supposed to fix), can only be done in the high-heeled running shoes that are supposed to eliminate it. A vicious circle.

Since I started running barefoot (which is a lot easier and safer than you may think), in some Vibram FiveFingers (imagine a rubber soled glove for your feet, complete with individual toe pockets), and in light racing flats, my form has gotten noticeably better and I haven't had any knee, hamstring, IT band, ankle, or shin injuries. Human foot really are stronger, smarter, and more reactive than you think they are, and you need to let them do what they were made to do.

I hope I've convinced someone to break the overengineered shoe habit, or given you something to think about, but at the very least, I've inspired myself to go out for another run.

(In the interest of full disclosure: Any part of this post that looks like it required research was shamelessly ripped off from Christopher McDougall's excellent book Born to Run. If you want to read a book about barefoot running and running in general written by someone who's a lot better writer than I am, read it. It's also just a great book.

Also, I'd like to acknowledge Rob Bato for being ahead of the curve. For not the first or last time.)