News and events

It has been a while again since I've added any entries here, partly because I ran and trained more than I was writing about running, and partly because my other lives took precedence for a while.

Firstly, I am teaching a workshop called "From Distal To Proximal" for Pilates trainers at A Body Of Work Studios on Ruger St. in the Presidio in San Francisco on November 4 from 1-4. The workshop is all about understanding how the feet and the core interact. We will be having some fun with the equipment and will get to know our feet through manual work and anatomy. It should be a blast. Contact A Body Of Work to enroll. Here's the official page.

Secondly, here is a great article which pretty much ties up the hype around barefoot running vs. shod.

"The truth about barefoot running: It’s complicated" by Cary Groner

What he says is that people who wear shoes have certain kinds of injuries. Barefoot runners have others. Training is important. Don't overdo it. Many barefoot runners wear shoes when they run, too. Many runners who swear by their shoes take them off to train.

He talks to Dr. Daniel Lieberman, (known as The Barefoot Professor,) who, while not happy about the hype that has developed around barefoot running, stands by the opinion that soft-soled running shoes that raise the heel are still terrible for human bodies.

I'd agree. On one hand, I have seen more and more people in our neighborhood with decent looking midfoot form in running shoes, and very few people actually running without shoes at all or in very minimal shoes like the FiveFingers or sandals. On the other hand, I still haven't found a minimal shoe (other than the FiveFingers) that I can run in comfortably. That includes huaraches! On the last hand, assuming that I can have three or more hands for the purpose of this paragraph, I absolutely refuse to spend more than $100.00 on running shoes, and continue to feel that the running shoe industry is a series of snake-oil scams.

As for injuries, it is true that each form has its own related set of problems. While I do occasionally get a foot injury from running barefoot and minimal, when I wore shoes I had debilitating pain in my neck, back, hips, knees and ankles. I gladly traded the second for the first!

If I had not had pain from running shod, then the tradeoff might not have been quite as attractive. I have to train my feet and the rest of me about five days a week to stay strong enough to run in the city. Which leads me to the next point.

What about running on hard, man-made surfaces? Is it good for us or not? It's certainly easier when running shoeless. I've heard many times that in order to learn how to run barefoot that the smooth sidewalk or pavement is what you want to start on, but there is a case to be made that a large, heavy person who tends to have lower muscle tone would not want to expose their bones to hard pavement as an introductory surface. If you are slight and strong, though, it may be fine. I do notice that when I run on pavement that my feet tend to be more sore afterwards and need to recover for a longer time than when I hike a trail or run on the track. For the record, I am 5' tall and about 112 lbs.

Lieberman briefly talks about the idea of a hard, smooth surface being unnatural in some ways, and that the consistency of the surface encourages repetitive stress. That takes me back to where I started a while back in this blog - that we are an all-or-nothing culture that loves to generalize without simplifying. We are fascinated with being the fastest, or going the farthest, doing the same thing over and over until we achieve some goal that we don't even realize is completely arbitrary. We forget that exercise isn't simply the repetition of this movement with this amount of weight then another movement with that amount of weight. While we like to create artificially symmetrical, repetitive systems for training our bodies (and everything else, really,) that's not how our bodies work.

If you watch a child outdoors, they don't just run. They run, stop, pick a flower, sprint to a tree, climb it, hang out there for a while and chirp at a bird, then they might stand up, balance and leap to the ground where they will gleefully roll around in the wet mud for a while before getting up and doing something completely different.

Varying activities truly strengthens the body, builds range of motion and balance. Most of all, though, it's FUN! I have learned when running that if I start feeling bored, or that panic when I start to dislike what I'm doing or that edge of fatigue before an injury that it's time to change it up.

Recently I started to use one of those phone applications that uses GPS to chart a run, has a timer and a way to measure how fast you're going. My tendency when I am using that program is to just run, and keep on running exactly the same way for as long as I can, to try to go faster, farther and increase the length and speed each time I run. While I didn't get injured from it, I also wasn't getting the kind of joy I got from simply moving until I felt like stopping, then moving again. Sometimes I go very slowly, sometimes faster. Sometimes I stop and take pictures. To me, a run is somewhere between a prayer and a meditation, and that's where it's at for me.

Finally, here are some pictures from my recent hikes/runs...

Land's End 10/24

Land's End 10/24

Sausalito 10/16

Tennessee Valley 9/2 (more of a hike)

Why we run.

I have recently been reading Chi Running, a thoughtful book that does a superb job of redefining the impulse to run. For Danny Dreyer it was the desire to understand the way the body works mixed with his discovery of Tai Chi that led him to re-evaluate running. He described the transformation of his approach to running from a competitive sport to a practice, like Tai Chi, or yoga.

A week ago I took Anna Halprin's class again where she prepared us for her annual Planetary Dance this summer, and a smaller version of it for National Dance Week in April.

As usual, we began by shifting our weight, walking and then skipping. Then we laid down and did some floor work followed by a free form improvisation. Afterwords we stood in a circle. First Anna asked "who are you running for today?". My ears perked up. It was an excellent question. Then she went on to say that when members of indigenous communities dance or run that they do so for the community, for a loved one, for all people, for the planet. The self is there, but of much less importance. Of course, I thought. When I run barefoot I am thinking about larger things than myself or people I know. I am thinking about making contact with the earth, with the planet and everything that's on it. One by one, we stood and declared for whom we would run. Then we added that we also ran for all other people with this issue. Then the runner dove into the first ring (for individuals/self) of the circle and ran with the others already there. As they felt ready, they turned farther into the formation and followed the second circle (the community), running the other way. An older woman turned again and walked a third circle (the world) slowly in the center. I had the distinct feeling that the third circle was reserved for elders.

Afterwards Anna smiled and said that she loved our dedications because they had been so specific. Everyone had spoken of a friend, a loved one, or a deep connection to important events in the world. She added.

"When you are really running for someone you can just run forever"

On Walking

Today I walked again.

It's not like I've not been on my feet and getting from one place to another. I've done that, with relatively little pain, but enough to know that I shouldn't do it for too long.

Today I rediscovered how to walk without a pronounced heel strike. I went for a barefoot walk to our neighborhood library, stopping and starting occasionally when my rhythm broke or when I lost my feeling of gravity. (It's possible to do that, especially when you're small!)

Something I've noticed is that even people who run barefooted still heel-strike when walking. I think it's because we've made assumptions about what walking means, what it looks and feels like. I remember reading posts by bf runners talking about how they were trying to learn forefoot or midfoot striking for walking gait and how hard it was.

So here's something to try today:

Take off your shoes and stand with one foot slightly behind the other. Don't try to point your toes straight ahead. Shift your weight onto the front foot and see if you can drop the back knee so that the hip releases and the foot glides forward slightly. You may find that it doesn't go anywhere at all, or you may find that the free leg's foot doesn't know how to leave the ground. When I first tried this walk, I couldn't get the leg through to the front without tucking the toe off the floor, tightening the ankle flexors and then the hip flexors (which may be in very different places but have a pretty strong connection, don't they?). Don't let the foot flex. Just keep releasing that femur down from the hip joint and allow it to slide it through by responding to gravity through both sides. Let the standing ankle really soften as the body moves forward, although it's easier said than done. The key is both ground reaction force and core work, of course - not clenching, gripping, six-packy wackiness, but motion all through the center of the body from ground to head that encourages the glide of the hip joint, softening of the knee and ankle joint. When it's right, the foot is just slightly plantarflexed as it passes through, with the ankle joint blissfully relaxed, toes rising just enough to clear the ground.

It started off mentally difficult with not much forward motion. It was very hard to get my working leg through without grazing the ground with the bottom of the foot, which is generally something to avoid when barefoot. I'm sure that many a motorist was wondering what the slow-moving, tiny barefoot lady was doing with her stop-and-start progress towards some good books and a turn around the neighborhood. (Do I dare wonder what kinds of comments I'd have gotten outside of the Bay Area?) They can think what they like.