Recently in running Category

so, i've turned into the anti-me as a runner. i'm wearing shoes, and today, i took my new garmin gps running watch for a spin. i had a forerunner 210, which is total crap. it refuses to get satellite lock and i'm not exactly in downtown NYC. so i ordered a 410 from REI, fully expecting to return it after a couple of infuriating failures.

nope. it has a really stupid user interface, for which i was fully prepared. it's also heavy, but it's a supercomputer on my wrist, so i must be reasonable. but in the functionality department, i'm impressed. it got satellite lock under my awning, and by the time i got to open sky across the street, it was at 15 foot accuracy. once i got moving, it went to 10 foot accuracy, which is about as good as it gets for civilian GPS.

so, that was surprising. garmin has figured out how not to suck. as far as i could tell it did not lose satellite lock during my run (but we'll see if that remains true once i start running under overpasses. the 210 would absolutely freak when the sky is lost for 2 seconds worth of overpass). but here's the surprising thing: over a whopping 2.25 miles (working on it, thanks) my pace was 8:25. that's great! the last time i measured my pace, last year in 5fingers, my pace was... 11:00. that's more like walking.

if i can manage to keep that pace for 5 or 6 miles, i will beat my speeds of last decade. old-me will be faster than young-me. that's something.

i think they cause me to overpronate, but really, wtf do i know any more? i have not yet measured but subjectively i feel that i am going quite a lot faster than on the 5fs -- but i'm also only going half as far (because for once in my life i'm behaving like a non-idiot and easing into my new shoes).

monday's run left me with pains in all the places that used to hurt when running in shoes. pains that i'd totally forgotten about once i started running barefoot (or fake barefoot). today i think i avoided most of that, but only time will tell.

overall i am very mixed about the new shoes. i feel like i've descended again into the pit of frustration that comes with finally adjusting to running in a particular shoe, only to have it go obsolete and off the market (which is exactly what happened with the 5f model i liked -- 5f's, however "unshoelike" they try to be, are still shoes).

but at the same time i can maintain some downhill speed, which i never figured out how to do in 5fs, much less truly barefoot. and on the flats, i feel faster as well. the keys to speed when running barefoot are cadence and forward leaning, but no matter how i tried i never could equal the (modest) speeds i managed with shoes.

but neither am i ready to hate my new running shoes.

since i began running again several months ago, i've been using my original 5finger KSO's, the old one-tone soled model that isn't made any longer as far as I can tell. this, of course, is my main reason for hating shoes: by the time i figure out that i like a particular shoe, it's no longer made, and i have to constantly start from scratch to find a shoe that i like.

over thanksgiving i looked at the bottom of my 5fs and found the toes had holes in them. so i switched over to my other pair, a more recent model of the KSO which has stiff, thick rubber on the bottom. i don't like the shoe very much.

also, i noticed that even in my favored 5fs, my times were so slow as to make a mockery of the term "running". back in the old days when i was young and fast, i wore regular running shoes. but i like the "fleet footed feel" of barefoot-ish running, even if i am not in fact fast. so i wanted a happy medium.

the new shoes seem to maybe be that happy medium. i don't hate them, though my feet and one knee feel a bit funny after today's short run. i guess i must get acclimated to them. i did feel faster but had no numbers to back up my feeling.

time will tell.

i bought a pair of running shoes. any second now i'm going to try them out and remember why i am the shoe hater.

i can have everything i want in life, as long as everything i want in life is to wake up next to my beautiful loving wife and go for a wonderful run in the mind-blowingly excellent california weather.

what is steel, compared to the hand that wields it?

though physical activity has been the cornerstone of my life for a decade now, i still view it as a recent introduction, and am constantly amazed at the bliss i can generate just by moving quickly through my environment.

the sun and the movement of my feet are the cures to all that ails me.

i'm nearly through my first reading of Dan John's excellent book. I haven't read such a great book since I read Draper's, and I'm still digesting it (actually, at the moment I'm attempting vainly to digest a fish oil capsule, which I've re-begun taking since John recommends them so thoroughly, and I already knew they're good for me).

Yesterday's reading had a lot to do with goals and goal setting, and it's really gotten me thinking: although I've whinged a lot on the blog about how I just can't seem to bike and lift at my best at the same time (like everyone else, duh), I've never actually set a goal. Well, I've set goals in both areas, just not lately.

Dan John emphasizes picking realistic complexes of goals, and not fudging in any way. For example, a realistic complex of goals for me would be:

deadlift 400 lbs

continue to drink wine several times a week

fit into my size 36 shorts

eat food i enjoy

Slap a date on there and I'm done.

The thing about picking a goal, and the thing I found so compelling about Dan John's approach, is that a single goal does not exist in isolation, at least, not for a person like me who isn't willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of a single goal. A decade ago, I had a goal to weight 185, and I reached it (for all of a week) by sacrificing drinking and eating foods I enjoyed. I'm not willing to give those up this time around, so instead of pretending that I am, those facts should be factored into my goals complex.

Once I'm set with a realistic set of goals, I can monitor my progress on all the goals at once, instead of maximizing one at the expense of the others.

This is a simple, brilliant concept. It may not have been exactly what Dan was getting at, either, but either way, it's an approach I plan to employ. I've been operating under the vague goals of "eat what i want, drink what i want, learn to power clean", but I think it's fast approaching time for a change, and the driver of that change will be a clean and precise listing of my goals for the near term.

we could be drivin
we could be far away from here

i've never liked or been good at running downhill, no matter my footwear.  the fivefingers revealed major flaws in my downhill running, teaching me that though i wasn't heel-striking anymore, i was toe-braking downhill, putting just as much stress on my knees and slowing myself down.

taking the shoes off brings in a whole new universe of teaching sensations, and i learned that toe braking isn't just bad for my knees and hips.  without the fivefingers, downhill toe-braking is likely to open a blister on my toes, or worse, depending on the pavement.

i've known for a while how to run downhill, my feet and body know what has to be done, but i wanted independent confirmation -- i wanted someone to tell me how to do it.

today i gave the technique a little practice: lean forward, cadence to ludicrous speed, and suppress the mental voice that's screaming that i'm going to fall on my face and kill myself.  the very high cadence tires me out pretty quickly, but the really hard part is overcoming the fear that i'm going to faceplant.  maybe if i'd been a skater in my youth i wouldn't have such a fear, but i wasn't, and the fear is pretty strong.

running this way seems to keep my feet landing under me or slightly behind me, eliminating the braking/shearing forces on my footballs and toes, maintaining or increasing my speed, and keeping the body happy.  it's the way it's supposed to be done, but i feel that it will take a very long time for it to become second nature.

today i ran two miles completely barefoot. not "barefoot" with my vibram fivefingers, but completely unshod.

a coworker sent me this webpage after i mentioned i ran barefoot:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/phys-ed-is-running-barefoot-better-for-you/?em

here's the short version, quoted from that article, on why i'm running unshod:

"On the one hand, no one has yet published a study on whether barefoot running is better for you -- the evidence is all anecdotal," Lieberman says. "On the other hand, no one has ever published a study showing that running shoes prevent injury."

in my case, running shoes have always been a problem. i had a pair that i liked, once, years ago, and then they were discontinued to generate more profits for the shoe company. these were top-shelf, wildly popular shoes, too, and the revision was totally different. even the fivefingers irk me on a longer run, and they encourage bad behavior.

in the 5fs, i tend to run too high on my toes, or to flap my feet on teh pavement when i attempt to correct for toe running. barefoot, right out the door i noticed i was immediately in a much better foot posture. the tenderness of my toes instructed me straight off when my landing/takeoff was sloppy. the feedback from the road was incredible - as barefoot runners will tell you is always the case.

i was very surprised how much of the road feedback is actually masked by the 5fingers. true, the 5fs are far, far superior to "traditional" running shoes - they punish heel-strike almost as much barefooting - but they mask other bad habits, like toe-running, toe-scraping, and foot flapping. not only that, but they *do* have arch support, which i find conflicts with the natural expansion of my feet over a run. i have to stop and loosen them, or suffer.

in any case, i finished my run with absolutely no pain anyhwere but my toe pads. i expected my toe pads to be torn and bloody but they were intact, just a little irritated. i will work more on my landing/takeoff to avoid scraping them, but i won't be putting shoes on again for my runs.

i find arguments like this to be specious at best:

The debate about whether barefoot running is somehow better underestimates the main player in the whole argument. "The body is quite smart and adaptable," Nigg says. In complex biomechanics studies that he's undertaken recently in his laboratory, he's found that people's leg muscles adjust, rather smoothly, to changes in their footwear. If you run barefoot and land near the front of your foot, he says, the impact moves up your leg along a different pathway than if you wear shoes. But your body can sense that difference, he says, and, as a result, different muscles fire, while other relax -- without any conscious volition on your part -- and the overall impact on the leg's various tissues remains about the same.

That's certainly fine on a treadmill but a real outdoors run involves curbs, uneven surfaces, cambered surfaces, and rocks and pine cones. in shoes, these things always twist my ankle -- i've been fortunate never to have injured my ankle seriously. barefoot, i'm paying so much attention that i never come close to such obstructions.

i don't buy the "overall impact" argument, either. in my running shoes, i impacted far more heavily than i do in the 5fs or barefoot, because my technique is vastly different. again, this is less apparent on a cushy lab treadmill, or even outdoors, since technique changes gradually.

"The body learns very quickly to compensate," he says. So, Nigg concludes, if you like your shoes, "stick with them." If you want to try running barefoot, Ross Tucker says, be judicious. "Many years of wearing shoes condition the muscle, tendons, and skeleton and a sudden shift to barefoot running" could, at least in the short term, be painful, he says. Start by running barefoot perhaps once a week, he suggests.

i used to buy this line of crap, too. but i deadlift, cycle, and climb -- i don't have any weak muscles, tendons, or skeletons. i'm not ready to run a marathon barefoot (i do have weak, soft soles) but my limiter is definitely not weak tendons.

That's what I love -- just being a barbarian, running through the woods.

- Born to Run, p149, "Jenn" speaking.

It sounds like she gets some of her inspiration from the same place as me.

As I pressed my kettlebell today, I thought of some friends of mine -- all of them, in fact, to whom i have proselytized the bells -- who scoffed at the high cost of the ugly hunks of iron, and consequently, do no weight bearing exercises at all.

i admit that it's silly to pay $200 for 24 pounds of cast iron, but once i did, the rewards i got were worth more than $200. I am fortunate to have the resources and the attitude to make possible such purchases, and the proper mental tuning to let such purchases not go to waste.

yesterday i found my barbarian self in san francisco, thinking no more and no less than the holy words: civilization - ancient and wicked.

we made it safely back to uncivilization where i could happily resume my own particular idiom, unappreciated as it remains.