Barefoot Running Blog

Two days back in Blighty and I’d gotten sufficiently concerned about my foot to take medical advice.  Although it’s not a serious worry, the nah-sayers against barefoot running love to warn of the dreaded metatarsal stress fracture for anyone who dares run without a pair of expensive padded trainers on their feet.  Like most people who’ve discovered barefoot running, I think this is a load of bollocks.  Until now of course.  Now that I’ve got an unexplained injury in the region of my 3rd or 4th metatarsal, all sorts of irrational thinking is taking place.

I put up with this for two days before I really had to know if I’d done anything to the bones.  No point in walking around on it if I should really have it in a cast.  So this evening I headed down to my local A&E to get it checked out.

Mission: Get them to X-Ray it at all costs, do not be fobbed off with anything less.

So to be fair, by the time I got down there it wasn’t hurting all that much.  The underlying problem was still there, but as I’d been dosing up on Ibuprofen all day, it wasn’t giving me much pain.  I therefore decided to ham it up a bit, in order to have them decide that they wanted to X-Ray it.  I checked in, saw the triage nurse and sat down expecting to be waiting hours.  Much to my surprise I was seen within 20 minutes and 10 minutes after that (following my acting debut) I was having my X-Rays.  They couldn’t find any fracture, break or any other problem with any of the bones and where at a loss to explain the problem.  No problem I said, relieved that it was something to do with the soft tissues, rather than a break of any kind, and couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

I’ve obviously strained something, and it will just require a little time and rest to fix it.  I’m going to take it as easy as I can over the next few weeks and continue to do no running at all.

So I got back this morning from 4 days at Oktoberfest and I seem to have gotten myself some sort of injury in my right foot.  I’d noticed on the 3rd day that I’d strained both my feet somehow.  It felt like I’d over used the tendons on the top of my feet, the arch formed by my leg changing direction into my foot.  I’m not sure what that bit of my foot is called. Anyway, both these felt like I’d strained something.

At the time I put it down to wearing my walking boots with my Lederhosen outfit.  As I’ve been mostly wearing minimalist shoes for the past 6 months or more, I figured my feet just weren’t used to heavy footwear.

Upon returning home, the left foot was already better, but the right foot seems to have been left with a more profound pain.  I’m hoping that it’s nothing and it will also recover in a matter of days.  I certainly won’t be doing any running and will be keeping walking to a minimum whilst it recovers.

I don’t understand.  Having worked my way up to 6k without shoes, switching to actually barefoot because I was starting to get blisters running in the barefoot running shoes. I went out this morning for a barefoot run and had to stop about 3/4 into a 6k run as I noticed my pads were starting to hurt.  I walked the rest of the way home and within an hour I had several large blisters on my pads.

Once these had developed to full size they were very painful to walk on and the following day I had to drain them in order that I would be able to move around at all.  There really is no explanation for this as far as I can see.  I can run this distance, I’ve done it several times now without shoes.

It was early morning though, and now that we’re heading towards winter the ground was incredibly cold.  Much colder than I’ve ever run on before.  So maybe the combination of having just got up and the ground being cold somehow contributed to this.  What I do know is that with my trip to Oktoberfest coming up in 10 days I’ll be doing nothing else running wise as I can’t afford to be lame for that trip.

It’s been almost 3 weeks since I last posted, mainly because I’ve hardly done any running. My feet have been resting a little as I wanted my pads to heal before I start up again. I’ve only done one run between then and now and managed to get yet another blister. I’d started off in barefoot shoes (without socks), but switched to actually barefoot half way round a 6k route when I felt like I was developing a blister on the inside of my right foot’s first metatarsal head. The rest of the run actually barefoot then just aggravated this.

So I’ve taken some time off running for this and other blisters on my pads to heal. But in the meantime I’ve been walking the same route every 3-4 days. I figured that if I’m to be able to run without any shoes on, then the soles of my feet really need to toughen up. Whilst I was waiting for my blisters to heal it wouldn’t do any harm to do this.

Tonight however was a very nice sunny warm evening (not sure how many of these are left now as we approach autumn) and as I cycled home from work I knew I wanted to go running.

As with my first foray into actual barefoot running I took my huaraches with me in case my feet couldn’t take it before I made it round. I need not have worried, it was an easy run and my feet made it, intact, with no blisters.

One thing that these few actual barefooted runs have made me realise is that running without shoes really is the best way to hone your running technique. Barefoot running shoes, although structureless and without support, still allow a wider tolerance of technique than being actually barefoot.

Upon first learning to run with a forefoot strike in barefoot running shoes, the tendency is to use all of your foot except your heel. Landing with a high toe step angle you’re too concerned about your heel hurting if you put it down that you don’t really put it down at all. This means that throughout the whole stride you’re taking your weight on your achilles and calves and never taking the strain off them. This isn’t how an experienced barefoot runner runs, but you shouldn’t worry at this stage. As long as you take it super slowly, I believe that over-using your legs like this is good conditioning in general for your altered running style. Later on as your legs become stronger, you’ll need to learn to adjust this gait to land with a flatter foot, your heels only just above the ground, touching down a split second after your forefoot giving your legs a brief respite as your downward momentum is converted to forward motion by your lower leg pivoting over your ankle.

The video below demonstrates this with an experienced barefoot runner.

Don’t worry if your gait isn’t exactly like this – it will come with experience.

I mention this as although I’d tried to lower the angle of my landing to allow my heel to touch down briefly as I’d read it should do done, my barefoot running shoes made it all too easy to land with a high foot angle. Starting to run with out any shoes at all, you soon realise that to land with a small surface area as a first contact is the most painful way to land and your feet automatically want to land with a flatter foot to spread the load and thus make it less painful. Landing like this makes it very easy to have the heal come down at the end of the stride softly, as it’s got less distance to travel. Also by the stage you’re ready to try running with no shoes at all, you’ll already have become a confident barefoot shoe runner, so your technique will almost be there anyway.

I’m really enthused by my run tonight. If someone had told me 6 months ago that I would be able to run all the way around Clapham Common barefoot, using the pavements and roads and never stepping on the grass once I would have thought they were mad.

Encouraged by my barefoot walking and short spurts of running totally barefoot last week I decided to try a short run actually barefoot – i.e. without my barefoot running shoes.  I really should have waited until my blisters had healed, but hey, this whole process has been marked by being a bit impulsive.

So I set out to run completely unshod until my feet told me to call it a day.  Bare feet are the best limiter so all the true bare-footers’ will have you believe, so what was the worst that could happen?

To run from my house, up to Clapham Common, a complete circuit and back again is 6k.  I set out on this run with my barefoot huaraches (mexican sandals) rolled up in my hands to change into once my feet had had enough.  Most of this run was on paving stones, so the feeling underfoot was mainly smooth and nice.  The occasional bit of tarmac road to cross wasn’t so nice, but the soles of my feet aren’t used to this, despite conditioning everything else for 6 months or so now.  But I got on with it.

I wondered if I’d get some funny looks from passers by, but actually I was too concerned about looking where my feet where landing to notice if anyone noticed my bare feet.

It was a really cool experience.  I’ve never felt better on a run before.  Sure, my soles have a lot of conditioning to do and had had enough after 5k and which point I transferred to the trusty huaraches.  But aside from one part of the run half way through where the path changes into a particularly nasty bit of rough tarmac on the inside of a bend in the road that is littered with small stones, the run was smooth and nice.

I think I’m going to try and alternate between the barefoot running shoes and actually barefoot for the short term.  I’ve wondered since stepping up to 10k distance with my barefoot shoes is the reason I’d got friction blisters is the fact that I’d been wearing socks with them.  So I’m going to try using them without socks to see if that makes any difference.  But I do like the idea of being able to run without any shoes at all and realise the only way to truly toughen my soles up for this is to do some running unshod.  Now I realise it’s totally possible – bring it on!

So having upped the distance I can run to 10k, the only problem I seemed to be encountering is blisters.  I keep getting blisters on or around the landing point on the balls of my feet.  I found this odd as the landing is so soft that this in itself surely can’t be the reason.  The skin on my pads are now much thicker then they were before.  Why then was I still getting blisters?

I started to try and examine what was going on during the stride and I came to a startling conclusion.  It appeared to being caused buy the friction between my foot and my barefoot shoe – but only on my right foot.  This is probably down to something wrong with my form – i.e. I’m doing something different with my right foot than with my left.  Alternatively it could be that my right foot is in some way smaller than my left and thus has more room to slosh around in the right shoe.  Either way when my foot bends up onto my toes just before take off I can feel the ball of my right foot slide back slightly in my barefoot shoe.  This repeated rubbing action is causing the frictional heat that in turn is causing the blister.  Anything of 5k or under doesn’t sustain this for long enough for my skin to react, but stepping up to 10k really shows this up.

So what to do?  Well I’ve been thinking for a while that I should try running actually barefoot.  That’s right, no shoes at all.  My pads just aren’t getting tough as fast as I’d like them to and going totally shoeless will surely sort that out for me.  But I’m scared by this. I guess this is just the same reservations that everyone has, so I’m not bothered by my fear.  But stepping outside of the comfort blanket of my barefoot shoes is a big leap.  I’m just not sure I could do it.

However last night help was at hand.  My girlfriend wanted to start to do some power walking around the common and asked me to come along.  Sure I said, as long as I can walk barefoot.  I figured that walking 6k barefoot would do my pads some good and could only help along the thickening up process.  Anyway, halfway through the walk she challenged me to a short run.  Before I knew it I was running barefoot along pavements, across roads, on dirt tracks.  It was easy and there was none of the friction I’d been experiencing in my barefoot running shoes.  Okay, most of the circuit was walking and not running.  But now I know I can do this, I’m going to give it a go.  I’ll have to drop my distance down to allow my feet to get used to it, but I don’t think it will be too long before I’m back up to distance again.

I’m not going to give up totally on my barefoot shoes though.  As far as I’m aware, virtually no one ever gets used to running on gravel, so I think there will always be a place for them.  And also, running actually barefoot is supposed to be the absolute best way to work on your form.  So maybe this will fix my form if that is what was causing the difference between both my feet in the first place.  Last night I took some barefoot huaraches with me and put these on for the last kilometre.  By then my skin had just about had enough.  I must always remember the barefoot running mantra – take it slowly.

I’ve been testing a theory since I’ve started barefoot running about stretching.  I’m sure you’ve seen the runners by the side of the road stretching.  They hold a foot behind them, bending their knee to stretch their quadriceps.  They put their leg horizontal on a suitable wall to stretch their hamstrings.  They lean forward and put both hands on a surface, whist keeping their feet flat on the floor to stretch their calves.  They do all this and more, and then they go running and still get injured.

I think all this stretching has gotten into the mindset of the western runner, that if they don’t do it they will injure themselves.  And when they do get injured they think that it must have been because they didn’t stretch enough or didn’t stretch properly.

Well since I’ve started my barefoot running project and this blog I’ve not stretched at all.  Yep, you heard me right, I’ve done no stretching.  I have, as I’ve well documented had a couple of mishaps along the way, but these weren’t injuries as such, just me over doing it.  Even then, I didn’t start stretching.

Right at the start of my barefoot running I remembered reading in Chris McDougal’s book Born to Run that when he lined up with the Taraumara to run a race, they didn’t stretch at all.  So I was curious if you needed to, hence I’ve always made sure I didn’t.

A good analogy here is a car engine.  The engine performs better when it’s warmed up.  Sitting there stationary reving the engine is not a good way to warm it up.  Better to actually drive the car, but be gentle with the engine until it’s warmed up.  This is the approach I’ve taken.  Starting my runs with a very gentle run and doing this for half a mile or so.

After which I will stop and do the closest thing to stretching you likely to see me do.  I perform a couple of what I call “gravity stretches”.  What I mean by this is there are a couple of positions I put my body in that uses my own body weight and gravity to stretch my achillies and calves.  I don’t consider these stretches as I’m not actively stretching anything.  I figured right at the start that my shortened calves and achillies would require a little help with the extra load that starting barefoot running would give them.  So to stretch them out can only help.

The two positions I adopt, for want of a better title, are:

• The Campsite Loo Squat
  This is the same squatting position you’d adopt when using one of those hole-in-the-ground toilets, especially popular at French campsites.  You’ll need to have your feet completely flat on the floor, so to start with will need to hold onto a post, etc. in front of you to stop yourself falling backwards. Having adopted this position, pull on the post until your heels are just off the floor. Once you can balance without needing to hold a post, you then hold your arms forward and use the weight of your arms to gentle balance you forward to achieve the same.  Touch the floor with your outstretched hands if you need to steady yourself.  You’ll feel this really pull on your achilles and calves, and if you’ve not already started barefoot running, this will be hard to do for any length of time.

• The Step Hang
  Standing backwards on a suitable step (flight of stairs, kerb, etc.), hang most of your feet off the step, so that your heels are in mid-air and the balls of your feet are on the edge of the step. You should not bounce at all, just let your own body weight pull your heels down.

Having done both of these a couple of times for a few minutes, I carry on on my run.  I do the same thing at the end of my run just for good measure.  On longer runs (10k plus) I may also do this half way through just for good measure.  I figure it doesn’t hurt to break the repetative cycle of my running to allow my feet and legs to have a small break and whilst I’ve stopped for a few minutes, I’ll roll my ankles around one at a time an also do my gravity stretches.

At no point have I had any problems and don’t expect to in the future.  I really am convinced that the obsession with stretching is part of the myth of motion control padded running shoes and serves no purpose whatsoever.  If anything, you can easily over stretch cold muscles and tendens and do more damage than if you’d not bothered in the first place.

Another thing I’ve got myself is a foam roller.  As your calves build-up you’ll notice they tend to tighten up.  This can, and should, be aliviated by a deep tissue massage.  But the cheaper and easier option is to work your calves with a foam roller.  Just google “foam roller” and you’ll find plenty of information on how to use these.  Just be careful not to roll over any joints whilst doing this.  It’s hurts like hell to start with, but with just a few minutes every day, you’ll soon reap the benefits of loosened up muscles and it won’t hurt at all to do.  Your legs will thank you for it when running and between runs.

It was a nice day in London today.  Let me say that again, it was a nice day in London today!  If you’ve lived in the UK this Summer you’ll understand the significance of that statement – we’ve had a shockingly bad Summer.  All to do with the Jet Stream apparently.

Anyway, all today I was looking forward to a run and I kept thinking that I’d really like to get up to 10k.  I was only up to 6k and over the past week I’d stepped my runs back up to every other day again.  I’d been doing 1 day out of 3 since I pulled my achilles, and I’d done this for the past 3 weeks, gradually building my distance back up to 6k.

But 6k is my comfort distance I’d begun to realise.  This was the distance that I’d comfortably worked up to before then trying to go further and pulling my hamstring.  So I began to wonder today if I’d hit a phycological glass ceiling with this distance.  I was determined to break out of this and I was going to do it today.  I told myself that I must stop if there is any discomfort whatsoever.  I also decided to achieve this distance by doing two complete laps of Clapham Common – my usual run – instead of running down to Battersea Park and back, which was a 10k run of mine when I was a heal-striker.  I figured the walk home should I have a mishap would be far less.  Also the surroundings are familiar, so hoped it would feel like the first lap once I was well into the second.

This all worked out well.  I completed both laps, and 10k in around 55 minutes.  That’s the sort of time I used to do in my padded trainers and back then I thought that was pretty fast.  I took care to run very slowly today to help both with my cardiovascular and to not overstrain my legs and feet.  So I was amazed at that time.  I could easily have run a much faster time, but speed is both important and will come later. 

Again I kept reminding myself that I had to land as gently as possible.  Years of not thinking about how hard my feet come down take a lot of deprogramming, but thanks to the proprioception feedback of barefoot running this is fairly easy to achieve.  I just have to keep saying to myself, “light and easy, light and easy.”

I’ve also noticed for the first time that my pads (the balls of my feet) are starting to toughen up and you can actually feel the skin is now thicker.

Just been out for a 6k run and I felt stronger and tighter with my form then ever before.  It really was the best run yet.  I think I may have really cracked this barefoot running lark.  But I think it’s important that I don’t become complacent about it and will continue to think, ‘form, form, form’.

At a couple of stages of this run my form felt so efficient it reminded me of the T-1000 Terminator from T2 and the way he ran – obviously not quite as fast though!

I think my speed is improving though.  Although I’m not bothered at all at how fast I’m running – one of the great things about this style of running is that you actually enjoy it, so what time you’re making becomes an irrelevancy – I was interested in how it’s comparing to my former running style.  So before I set off I started a stopwatch.  I didn’t take this with me – I’m not training for the Olympics so really didn’t need to know my splits along the way.  I used to do a complete circuit of Clapham Common, plus to and from my house in 28-29 minutes.  As barefoot running involves a shorter stride, it feels much slower.  Supposedly the speed comes after you master the technique, so as you’re learning this you’ll be quite slow, and it feels like it.  But how slow?

Well, I was amazed when I got back and checked the stopwatch.  It showed 31 minutes!  Considering that I have to cross about 5 busy roads on this circuit and I’ve a mind to wait for a proper gap in the traffic these days, rather than risking my life and nipping between the traffic, I reckon that’s about the same time.  I was sure it would be about 40 minutes or more.

Another observation was that the condition I reached the end of the run in was vastly different than before.  Before I would be very out of breath, would have to squat whilst I regained my composure and got my breath back.  Before I would be looking forward to the run ending long before it did.  Yesterday I could have ran on further – much further.  I wasn’t really out of breath, although obviously my breathing and heart rate were increased, but it was manageable, sustainable.  I really felt strong.  I wonder if that is a result of barefoot running simply being more efficient?

It’s been a week now since I started running again, and I’ve run three times.  I’m already back up to my longest distance of just under 6k.  It was easy to do this, despite my three weeks without running.

I did notice the day after the 3rd run that my calves were tight and aching a little.  I thought I’d left the calf issues behind right at the start of my barefoot adventure.  But it would seem a gap in running of just three weeks is enough to start the atrophy.  Still, no biggie, this is no worse than post-gym ache.  Another week and I’ll not be able to feel them again I reckon.

One thing I have done differently on all these three runs is concentrate totally on my form.  I was so bothered that I’d over do it again, I kept repeating to myself, “light and easy, light and easy”.  This was the mantra of Cabello Blanco, a character from Born to Run.  (I’ve since realised that his mantra was actually, “Easy, Light, Smooth and Fast”, but what I remembered was still relevant.)

I tried to made sure that every step I took was as light as possible.  I kept thinking over and over, “light and easy, light and easy”.  This really made me concentrate on how my feet were landing and made sure that they landed as lightly as possible. I hoped this would stop me being able to put any undue strain or pressure on my feet and having managed the complete circuit on the 3rd run, I think that strategy served me well.

I’ve noticed that I’ve also stopped obsessing about what my feet are doing.  What I mean by this is worrying about exactly how they are landing, where the contact point is, if my heal comes down at the end of the stride, etc, etc.  I’ve realised that they now just do their own thing and as long as I concentrate on landing as softly as possible, they do exactly what they’re supposed to do.  It also helps to keep your torso upright, rather than lean forward like heal-strikers.  This is easily achieved by pulling your shoulders back and pushing your chest forward.  In doing this you can feel your pelvis also push forward, which straightens up your whole body and discourages over striding.  Paying attention to how your hold your upper torso has dramatic consequences for how you make your stride.

So, very pleased to be back running again, and still impressed by the fact that I’m still learning all the time.