Barefoot Running Blog

I’m an idiot.  I realise that some people will think they know that already, but last week it was definitely true.

Having had a little wobble 10 days ago worrying that I’d done something to my hamstring, I went out running again as soon as it felt better.  That day I ran 4k before stopping when I began to feel something.  Which was probably fine.  It felt okay.  Although later on I felt a bit of a ache in my achilles.  This is the point at which I should have obeyed the golden rule – always listen to your body.  But of course I didn’t do that did it did I.

No, what I did was order myself some hot/cold sports compresses from eBay and the first day after they arrived I couldn’t wait to try them out.  This of course would involve a run, even though my achilles was still aching from the run 3 days before.  What I now see also didn’t help was I went out after work the night before and spent 6 hours in barefoot sandals.  This in itself wouldn’t have been a problem, as I my achilles wasn’t right in the first place, wearing zero drop shoes and standing up for 6 hours the day before was just putting more strain on it.

Anyway, the next day I went running and tried to do a complete circuit of the Common (5.6k).  Even though my achillies was starting to give me some concern, I just carried on and ignored it, thinking I could run through it.  Besides, I had my sports compress waiting at home from me in the freezer – what an earth could go wrong?  A big mistake.

Before even completing this circuit I had to stop to cross a road.  When I tried to start up again on the other side, my body told me in no uncertain terms that I’d been a silly boy.  There was no way I could run anymore, and even the 1k walk home was a struggle.  My achilles was really hurting.

It’s amazing how you can choose to ignore a developing injury and your body will let you carry on – to a certain degree anyway.

So it’s now 4 days later and I’m still having problems walking.  It’s getting better every day and I estimate in another 2 days that I’ll be walking again just fine.  But running?  I’m going to leave it a full 2 weeks from being able to walk without a hobble before I start back running.  And I’m going to start off at a small distance again and not think I can simply jump back up to the distance I’d worked up to.  I’ll probably start this off with 100-Up exercise.  Never heard of this?  Well see Chris McDougall’s explanation in the video that I’ll post right after this post.

I saw on the interwebs this morning that Eddie Izzard has had to halt to his amazing 27 back-to-back marathons in South Africa.  He quoted unforseen medical complications as his reason for stopping, but said “I will return to South Africa and run the 27 marathons and finish this story.  I owe that to Nelson Mandela who has inspired the world to struggle and succeed no matter what obstacles are thrown at us”.

I couldn’t help wondering when I saw the headline on someone else’s newspaper on the tube this morning if this wasn’t a case of him over-doing it with the barefoot running.  I mean, I’ve been there myself a few times.  You work your way up to a comfortable distance and you think, this is easy, my body has fully adapted, I am superman!  Then you pull something and realise that it’s only been a couple of months and you called it way too early.  Surely the musculoskeletal setup in your feet and lower legs can’t possibly fully adapt in that short time.  And surely if you were going to run a marathon per day for a month, if your body hasn’t fully adapted, it would soon tell you.

I really hope this is not the case and it’s something else.  As this will be immedately jumped upon by the padded trainer brigade as proof that barefoot running is bad for you – those fires being convieniently stoked by those with vested interests in retaining the padded trainer status quo.  Which as well as obviously including the trainer manufactuerers, also includes anyone who owns a pair and still uses them.  This is because having spent the money on these expensive items, they’ll subconciously need to justify their position in favour of them.

In that way I see it has parallels with smoking vs stopping smoking.  The late Allen Carr says in his book, “The Easyway to Stop Smoking” says that when someone stops smoking, other smokers subconciously try to get them to start again by trying to undermine their position.  The reason they do this is because the more people around them that stop smoking, the more their position is underminded and the more they begin to look stupid by continuing to do it.  I think it’s probably also true of the barefoot running revolution.  The amount of people who have poured scorn on my barefoot running is unbelievable.  The one thing they all have in common is that they are all runners themselves and have invested in expensive padded trainers.  Of course none of these people have tried barefoot running, so they’re not qualified to comment.  But that doesn’t stop them and believe you me they don’t like it, they don’t like it one bit.  It makes me smile everytime.  I couldn’t care less if they never try it, I feel no need to justify my position.  After all, I’ve tried it both ways and I know now which is my preference.

Anyway, back to Eddie Izzard.  Well done Sir, and I hope to see you back in SA completing your challenge – barefoot or not.

I’ve spent a week worrying about what I did to myself last Sunday. A week not really knowing if I’d actually done myself any harm or not.  I assumed I’d pulled a hamstring, given that the pain was centred in the back of my knee.  Well, I say pain, what I really mean is a tightness there.  I’d stopped running when I felt a twang, so I probably saved myself any real damage.  But what the hell do I know?  I’ve never done anything like this before.

Anyway, 6 days later and I was itching to get out there.  The weird feeling had stopped the day before and a few running paces around the house landing on my forefoot felt fine.  So what harm could it do?  I wondered if I should just run around the block and I probably should have done only this, but I didn’t want to start my 3 month build up all over again, so I decided that I would run around the Common (5.7k), but at the first sign of anything not feeling right, I’d stop and walk the rest of the way home.

The blister under the end of my 3rd and 4th metatarsals had now healed, so I was able to resume my natural landing foot strike.  I won’t ever try to control this again, as I’m sure this contributed to my problems last week.  I also tried to stop concentrating on how my foot landed.  I read last week that a mistake all newbie barefoot runners make is to fall for the misconception that “barefoot running means striking the ground with your forefoot and effectively running on your toes”.  The advice here was to “Stand up straight and don’t even think about your feet; just let them do their thing and push yourself along with your butt muscles”.   Now I’m not really sure what he meant by pushing with your butt muscles, but I think I did understand what he meant you’re not to do – worry about your feet.

I’d not exactly been running on my toes.  I learnt early on that your heal must come down at the end of the stride, if only briefly, but I guess I was a little obsessed with using my forefoot-to-heal motion as the shock absorber for my stride.  This I think was important in the beginning.  In order to learn this style of running, I think you have to start by running on your toes almost.  This is to stop you slamming down your heal and injuring yourself.  Of course this puts more strain on your calves, achilles and ham strings, but hey, you start slowly don’t you.

Anyway, I noticed along the way that as I got good at this, my feet started to land a little flatter.  Looking back I think I’d be fighting against this slightly, when what I should have been doing is forgetting all about it.  What I think was happening here was my feet were doing the decision making on how flat they could land depending on what they felt beneath them.  The softer the terrain, the flatter my feet would land, the harder, the more they would utilise the spring of my forefoot-to-heal motion.  I didn’t have to consciously control this anymore, I just had to “let them do their thing”.

So armed with this new idea, I set out after 6 days off and tried not to think about my feet at all.  I ran as much as I could on grass, which I knew would allow my feet to go into soft terrain mode and thus allow them to choose to land flatter, placing less strain on my legs.

It was a good run, I ran about 4k before I started to feel a little tightness in the back of my knee and decided that I should stop just in case.  I thought I’d done well to do any running at all only 6 days after my first wobble, so wasn’t going to push it.

Now it’s the following day and I have no problems to report with my ham string, although I do have a little discomfort in my right achilles and calf.  But I’ve a plan for that, which I’ll talk about in a later post when I’ve had chance to test it out.

There’s no other way to say this, but yesterday I sustained my first injury.  There, I’ve said it.  I think I’ve pulled a ham string in my right leg.  Not badly, I think, but having never had this happen before, only the next few days will tell.

I went out for my usual 5.5k run around the Common which takes me 30 minutes. I was just 20 minutes in I felt a bit of a pain shooting down the back of my leg, most noticeable in the back of my knee.  I stopped immediately, walked a bit, tried running again, stopped immediately as the pain was still there, and then resigned myself to walk all the way back home.  At no time was I in any real pain, but I can now feel a tightness in the back of my knee when walking, so I’ve been taking it easy since.

How could this have happened?  Hadn’t I been taking it very carefully and slowly?  What was different today?  Trying to work out what happened I began to realise that today a lot of things were different.

Firstly I’d gotten a blister a few runs previously on my right foot at the end of my 3rd and 4th metatarsals.  So rather than waiting for it to heal, I’d continued running, but actively tried to shift my landing more to the ends of my 1st – 3rd metatarsals.  Which seemed to work at the time.

Secondly I’d left my bike at the tube station on Friday.  When I went to retrieve it yesterday morning I found that someone had nicked the saddle.  So I had to ride it home standing up.  This would probably have been fine if I’d not set out to collect it in barefoot sandals.  Thus all my weight was on my calves, achilles tendons and hamstrings whilst standing up riding it home.  It felt fine at the time, if a little uncomfortable on my soles.

Thirdly I’d walking to collect it in the said barefoot sandals, which is more continuous walking barefoot than I’d usually do any day in one go.  It was about a mile.

So I now realise that before setting out on my run, I’d already exercised all this musculoskeletal setup in my lower legs.  Thus, when I started my run, it was as if I’d already done some barefoot running that day.   20 minutes of running on top of that, pushed my under-developed legs a little too far.

I’m a bit gutted, but hopefully this will get better in the next few days or weeks and I can get back to where I got to in a short time.  The most important thing that I did do was stop immediately.  Listening to your body is very important, it doesn’t tend to lie.  I hope it was the things I’ve identified above and rather than doing any real damage I’ve just had a warning from body to take it easy.

Only the plus side, my arches and feet in general were really starting to get used to the running and the general aching from them had subsided so much I’d almost forgotten about it.

My conversion to barefoot running has also started converting me to barefoot walking – barefoot walking for ALL activities, not just delibrate barefoot walking to exercise my calf muscles and achilles tendons. Of course that doesn’t mean that I’m going everywhere barefoot, it means that I now want to wear barefoot shoes for everything.  The only thing that has stopped me throwing all my old shoes away already, is a lack of money to replace them all in one go.

So what exactly is a barefoot shoe?  Well aside from being a strange oxymoron, it’s actually quite simple.  It’s a shoe that most closely mimicks going barefoot, whilst still offering you some level of puncture protection.

In my opinion it must feature:

• No Heels – Zero heel-to-toe drop, or a completely level sole.
• Minimal sole – Any more than 5mm and you can’t feel the ground properly.
• Flexible – You must be able bend these shoes in half easily.
• Foot shaped – The toe box must be wide and actually shaped like your foot – your toes need to be able to splay under load, so you must be able to wiggle your toes when not under load without restriction.

If a shoe conforms to these four things then it’s a barefoot shoe.

So why do most shoes have heels?

Well it seems that they originally stem from horse riding.  The addition of heels to shoes stopped the rider’s foot from sliding forward in the styrups.  Therefore that was their original purpose.  After this their use in fashion has been the only driving force.  They have gone in and out of fashion so many times, that it’s not worth trying to plot their history.

Wearing heeled shoes causes a shortening of the calf muscles and the achilles tendons.  Which in turn are the root causes of: Planter Fasciitis; Achilles Tendonitis and Morton’s Neuroma amongst other ailments.  So whilst we all seem to think that shoes must have a heel, it’s actually just a fashion thing.  A fashion thing that has been going on so long that we’ve all forgotten that not only don’t we need them, they are actually bad for us.

Well no more for me.  I’ve now got myself four pairs of barefoot shoes and will continue replacing all my “conventional” shoes just as fast as I can afford to.

Well as I discovered my PF when away when I spent two weeks without shoes (although I’d stopped running some time before this).  I would suggest the best plan to be buy yourself some barefoot shoes and just spend a couple of weeks walking around in them and don’t wear any other shoes this whole time – heels I think are the real problem as they allow your calve muscles and achilles tendon to shorten.  If your PF improves then you’ll have answered your own question, then you can start BF running if you want.  You’ll have to start with barefoot walking anyway to get your feet ready, but if you have to make time to do that actually barefoot, it probably won’t happen.  With barefoot shoes you’ll just be conditioning your feet without even thinking about it.

Let me know how you get on.  The only barefoot shoes I know about are VivoBarefoot (google them).  I have the Ra for work and have just bought the Oak for leisure.

Oh, and as for how to start, I suggest you read my whole blog, it’s not long.  See all the posts here.  Or at least see this entry for my programme.  Oh, and check out Vivo’s Training Clinic here.  That’s where I started.  But basically read as much as you can and find your own way.  If my blog is of any help then I’m pleased, as I struggled to find any full accounts of anyone’s conversion, so really wanted to document mine so that someone else could perhaps benefit.

Oh, and am I convinced? TOTALLY.

The other day whist running an incident occurred that I almost forgot about. Then later when reading Tim Brennen’s blog, I watched a video he links to of a tennis player twisting her ankle.  The point was to demonstrate that when wearing shoes this is all too easy.  And that made me realise that I’d come close to twisting mine earlier that day, but hadn’t as I had been wearing barefoot shoes.  Let me explain…

A lot is made of proprioception with barefoot running.  That’s the fancy word for the feedback your body is getting through your feet each time one is planted on the ground.  Apparently there are nearly as many nerve endings in the soles of your feet as there are in your sexual organs, which is quite a lot.  However we mask most of this by wearing shoes, especially very padded ones like modern running shoes.

The incident was that whilst out running the inside of my right foot came down on a small rock that was about an inch square.  Before my full weight could come down on this, my right knee bent which allowed time for my left leg to swiftly come forward and take my full weight, therefore avoiding doing this with my right.  To me it was a quick stumble and I carried on.  But seeing the ankle twist video later on, the full significance of what had happened dawned on me.

What had happened was proprioception in action.  The feedback from the millions of nerve endings in my feet, detected that rock just as the ball of my foot started to step on it and immediately took evasive action.  Had I been wearing padded trainers I wouldn’t have felt it until my full weight was already on my right foot and by then it would have been too late.  My right foot would have rolled underneigh me with my leg and body continuing over the top, resulting in a very bad twisted ankle.

But that didn’t happen, and the evasive action was so swift and involuntary that I almost didn’t register it had happened at all.  I guess it also allowed my ankle muscles to stiffen in time to also help avoid a twist, which again wearing padded trainers would have numbed me to and would have been too late.

We just don’t get this kind of feedback from the ground that we are designed to get, but for the most part I guess we don’t need it.  We have after all created a living environment where the surfaces are all flat.  When we venture off-piste into the wilderness we’ve created boots that support our ankles, so even then it doesn’t matter if you plant your foot unexpectedly on an uneven surface, as we’ve taken care of it.

I’m now starting to wonder if the ankle support on boots are actually there to solve the problem of a lack of proprioception when walking on uneven and unstable surfaces.  Maybe if my feet were allowed to feel the trail whilst walking in the country, the proprioception would stop me twisting my ankle by allowing me to take evasive action, just like in my running example.

I started this post wanting to explain how I avoided twisting my ankle whilst running but it’s made me realise that I now doubt my walking boots effectiveness over my own feet – if I allow them to do what they were intended to.  Food for thought.