It was with some
excitement that I packed my new running shoes into the car on Good Friday
morning, before driving up to North Norfolk to spend Easter with family by the
sea. I have done no more than
ten-minute bursts of running in the last two months as I am recuperating from
niggling injuries. What better way to end my hiatus than with a blast through
the pinewoods behind the beach? Plus, my new Brooks GTS 13 2E shoes are
embarrassingly shiny and in need of some breaking in. Resplendent in white and
blue they sure do make me look like an American tourist and would go well with
chinos and a bum bag. The man in Runners Need showed me, with the aid of a
treadmill, cameras and a laptop, how my foot rolls inwards when it strikes the
ground. This lateral movement may be contributing to the pain in my knee and
could be mitigated by support on the instep of the shoe. So, I went away and
saved £24 buying the very same trainers from the internet. I would feel guilty
if Runners Need wasn’t so overpriced.
Inspirational Reading
Last year, I was
inspired by the best-selling book, Born to Run, to try out the barefoot running
style. It is an excellent read, enjoyable for non-runners too, which vividly
documents the author’s journey into the boiling wilderness of Mexico to meet a
long distance running tribe, the Tarahumara, who measure their races in days,
not kilometres. Hidden from the eyes of the world these natural athletes have
been quietly tearing up the canyons for years and think nothing of racing the
equivalent of 4 back-to-back marathons, wearing only sandals.
In his book,
Christopher McDougall extols the virtues of allowing the body’s natural
bio-mechanical system, evolved over millions of years, to do its work by
reading the ground through the highly sensitive nerve endings on the soles of the feet, without large chunks of
plastic in the way blocking the flow of information. His argument made sense to
me; as a species we are designed to run long distances to catch prey and we
have done so effectively for a long time without the benefit of a pair of air
or gel-cushioned shoes. Sure, cavemen were not running on tarmac and our feet
are safer with protection from dog muck and broken glass, but is too much
technology having an adverse affect on nature, changing the way we run and
causing injury? This is where it gets controversial, big business is clearly
not happy at the suggestion that it has been peddling a damaging product and
that the lofty claims made of the latest lab-tested wonderment are hokum, but
the barefoot revolution has gained momentum over recent years and it’s now not
uncommon to see runners wearing the Five Finger Vibram shoes. They are creepy,
by the way.
Learning The Hard Way
I have some
back-to-basics style running shoes myself and I laced them up initially with
great enthusiasm. But, after short runs I was experiencing uncomfortably tight
muscles and could not wear them regularly. It was only recently that I learnt
it takes 6-12 months to retrain your body to run ‘barefoot’, striking the
ground with the ball of your foot first. This retraining involves short runs of
five minutes or so to begin with, building up the duration gradually. So, it’s
a process that requires dedication and should be done carefully to avoid injury
as your body adjusts. There is more to running than the shoes you choose to
wear and it is wise to pay attention to the whole body and develop good
technique before deciding to make the switch.
And if you are happy running in ‘normal’ training shoes, as millions of
people are, then there is probably no need to change.
I love the idea
of running free across the plains, barefoot, with only a mammoth skin loincloth
to protect my modesty. But mammoth skin loincloths are hard to come by and the
idea of running for only five minutes at a time is horrifying. So, for now, I’m
sticking with my Brooks GTS 13 2E. And shorts.
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