Week 6, Run 3

Last night's run was a barefoot 6.2km, and... educational.

The biggest lesson I learned was in preparation. My distance for this run was going to be a new peak for me for this year. As a result, I had to expand my route. I'd drawn up on a map what looked like a good route, and proceeded to follow it.

My feet weren't ready for what I threw at them. It wasn't the distance, it was the terrain that doesn't show up on Goole Maps. Several blocks of new construction means a mix of nice new sidewalks, and nice new sidewalks covered in debris. Then there's the older houses which have sidewalks made rough by years of erosion. And then there were sections where the just was no sidewalk where I expected it! My only choice was to share the gravel littered street with vehicles. Not fun.

Because of my feet, I ended up cutting some of my intervals short. It was supposed to be 3 minutes running, 1 minute walking, 10 times. A few of my runs were 2 minutes and a few of my walks were 2 minutes. But some of my runs were 4, and I did about 13 intervals in total. So I think I made up for the 2 or three cheat intervals.

As this is my 5th run using RunKeeper, I can now start seeing patterns in my results. It looks like my first and second intervals are by far my fastest. During these intervals I actually reach my goal speed of 10km/h. Based on my notes, it seems the longer I maintain that pace during the run, the more likely I am to refer to it as "brutal". In other words, I'm not quite at the point where I could sustain that pace comfortably. It's hard to be building up distance while also trying to increase my speed. Things will get better. I'll be making sure I pack my VFFs when I'm uncertain about the terrain. My goal of finishing the Sun Run in an hour is higher priority than finishing it barefoot. Besides, FiveFingers get enough funny looks and comments already.

Second Barefoot Run

Just ran my second barefoot run of the season. Finally a good run, and it was 8 intervals of 3 minutes run, 1 minute walk. So one interval short of my run last Sunday that was so rough for me. I'm seriously considering showing up for the next group run without shoes because my feet are handling the distance so well. I've got 7 weeks to go my feet are already good for at least 4 of the 10km of the Sun Run.

You can get all the details from my RunKeeper activity log.

Oh, and it was another nice night run at 5C/41F. That is officially my most comfortable temperature for running. Not looking forward to running in the 30s.

Learning to Run

For anyone interested in the program I'm following for training for the Sun Run, you can get the LearnToRun10k PDF.

It's a great 13 week program to take you from non-runner to being able to complete a 10k. I can't compare it to any other programs because it is the only one I've ever done, but it worked for me last year.

I'm following the same program this year since I didn't run nearly as much after the Sun Run as I'd have liked. I'm also doing it in Vibram FiveFingers this year, so that's a good reason to use a gradual build up program.

I highly recommend this type of training program for anyone interested in getting into running. It may be hard at times, but by the time you're half-way through the program you'll feel like a runner. And by that I mean you'll start to crave your run.

First Barefoot Run of 2010

It's funny how restarting something you've done before can be new ground...

I transitioned to running and walking barefoot and in Vibram FiveFingers last summer and am familiar with that process. Getting back into it, however, is new to me.

I just got back from run 2 of week 5. My goal is to do my mid-week runs on Tuesday and Thursday night, but that hasn't been working as well for me as I'd like. Oh well, better a day late that skipped.

According to the Weather Network, it's 5C/41F outside. Perfect for me. It was a 5 minute warm up walk followed by 8 intervals of 2 minutes run, 1 minute walk, and then finished off with a 5 minute cool down walk before stretching. I carried my pair of black Treks in my hands expecting to slip them on after an interval or two when my feet started hurting or get too cold. I ended up carrying them the entire time!

It was another brutal run for me, effort wise. I felt sluggish and tired for almost the entire time. The hills are particularly hard on me this year. Either I'm pushing myself harder this year, or I've fallen further than I thought from my peak. In either case, this is the tough period. I'm looking forward to it getting easy again like it was near the end of last year. I'm also looking forward to doing it at a faster pace than last year.

In addition to easing back into running in general, I guess the only other thing I need to watch for is how much skin I'm wearing off. Now it's time for a shower and thorough foot scrubbing before crawling into bed for the night. Hope my feet are still happy when I wake up.

First Barefooting of 2010

Nothing big, just a quick trip down the block to put a letter in the mail. The ground and air were the perfect temperature for me. Overcast, 7C (45F).

The biggest surprise to me was how natural it felt after wearing shoes (well, FiveFingers) for the last 5 or 6 months. I expected it to feel like the first time, with my feet overly sensitive and my gait feeling awkward. Seems my feet didn't go back to sleep like after the first twenty-something years of wearing shoes and there was no sensitivity problems. As for my gait, I'm giving the credit to Vibram for the design of their FiveFingers line of "shoes".

I'd been dreading the re-conditioning I'd have to do in order to add barefoot running to my Sun Run training, but not so much now. Things are looking up in barefoot land.

Not Quite Barefoot

My group run on Sunday was brutal, but it shouldn't have been.

We started by walking up a not so short hill and then proceeded to run 9 intervals of 3 minutes running, 1 minute walking. This should not have been so hard. In fact, it normally wouldn't have been. But we had special guests. The UBC race-walk team. We had them come with us last year, and it had the same effect.

It seems being in the presence of people who walk 20km in less than 90 minutes makes some people run faster. Did I mention these are world class athletes? Ya, as in half of the top 5 fastest men and women in Canada. People who hold current national and continental records for race walking... But I digress.

What made this run so brutal was actually the pace at which we walked up that first hill. I'm prone to shin splints. I had a problem with them during last year's training, but my switch to VFF/barefoot running after the Sun Run made them a thing of the past. But walking with any speed over any distance has always triggered them for me (and probably always will). And it did, with a vengeance.

So I started my first run interval up hill, with shin splints, and at a pace that wasn't maintainable. The result? I was limping by the 5th interval and ended up walking through the 6th running interval. During this time I went from the front of the group of 70+ runners to the back. My cardio was not the problem, it was the pain, which lead to total mental failure. I knew it was a mental limitation, and that's the only reason I was able to force myself to run the last 3 intervals.

Our route was shorter than the intervals so we ended up running our last interval on the track and then cooling down by walking around the track. It was at this point I decided my Treks were too warm and took them off. I felt almost immediate relief! I was truly shocked. I didn't even know my feet were being constrained by my FiveFingers and had actually tightened up. My feet immediately spread out over the cold track and released all their tension. It felt so good, in fact, that I actually ran a short bit even though I was supposed to be doing a cool down walk.

I already knew from experience that VFFs were not the same as going barefoot, but I'm going to have to seriously reconsider where on the curve they actually are. I think I'll start by incorporating some barefoot warm up at the start of or before my run.

Barefoot Followup

So it's been a little while since I talked about my barefoot adventures. I've come to a few conclusions.

Being barefoot is awesome, but having to carry shoes around for when public transit officials tell me I can't ride the train barefoot is a pain in the [expletive].

Vibram FiveFingers are very comfortable as an all-day, everywhere shoe and attract far more positive attention and next to no negative attention.

As you can imagine, FiveFingers are what I've been wearing lately. I managed to go a solid few months barefoot and my feet were getting quite tough. There were very few surfaces that I found uncomfortable, and none that I walked on regularly.

For my Sun Run training I've been running in my new FiveFinger Treks. I find the sole to be a little thick for my liking, but I love the leather they used for the rest of the shoe. I took a long break from running barefoot and pseudo-barefoot because it didn't feel right. I did some more research while I took my break and found I'd ignored one really important point.

Relax. Seriously, let your legs from the knee down go almost limp. Don't try to position your foot so you land on your forefoot. That was my mistake. If your knees are bent enough, your foot will land forefoot first. Let your feet relax too. If they are tense, you'll hurt yourself.

In other barefoot related news, I've finally converted my wife! Partially, at least. She's now wearing her own pair of FiveFinger KSOs and enjoying them. I've been watching closely to make sure she doesn't repeat any of my mistakes, like starting off too aggressively or running wrong.

Since I'm not keeping my Sun Run training a surprise this year, I'm going to try to post regularly about my progress. Stay tuned..

Barefoot Experiment: Lessons Learned, Questions Asked

Continuing on, as promised, with my thoughts on life without shoes: What are some of the problems with going barefoot? What kinds of things have you had to work around that you didn't expect?

Obviously, there are some problems with going barefoot. If there weren't, I like to think most people wouldn't wear shoes. It turns out that shoes are deeply ingrained in our society. (Wow, really?) I'm speaking of what is generally referred to as the Western World, here, as that's where I was born and where I continue to live.

What kinds of daily activities are different for barefooters? Well, visiting people is different. You know the ritual. You come in the door, scan for a pile of shoes and promptly add yours to the pile in an effort to keep the carpets clean. But what if you can't take your "shoes" off? The most popular and clever solution I've heard is baby wipes. You can wipe your feet off at the door and enter without leaving black foot prints all over the place. Brilliant! In my own home, I'm lucky enough to have exterior water faucets at every entrance. I now wash my feet whenever I come in the house and whenever I leave the house. Especially on my way out to visit someone. My feet get hardly any dirt time when they go from a clean puddle to the car to a clean driveway. It also helps to have a few extra layers of skin on the soles of my feet, so I can scrub them off on the sidewalk and door mat before going in.

Other fun observations: Not all floor tiles are the same temperature. Exposed aggregate driveways are rougher than crushed gravel. Lotion that claims to soften feet actually softens your feet (whoops!).

I'll sign off with a question I've started asking people in response to them claiming bare feet were dirty...

When's the last time you washed your shoes?

Barefoot Experiment: Why?

In my last post I referred to going barefoot as an experiment, but I didn't put a lot of effort into explaining what I meant by it.

I am, generally speaking, a minimalist. I do crazy things like never wear a jacket unless it is below freezing. To me, the effort of carrying around a jacket all day and keeping track of where it is is a pain in the butt and something I'd rather not do. So instead, I condition myself to go without. Similar, I don't like being weighed down by heaving shirts and warm pants that will inevitably be too warm to wear indoors, where I spend most of my time. So I condition myself to be able to wear shorts and tshirts most of the year. No, I don't live in Florida. Yes, it does snow here in the winter. I am one of those few people who know what kind of traction sandals get on ice and in snow (actually quite decent).

Imagine my glee when I discovered that some people put shoes in the same category as I put jackets. Part of my minimalist nature is questioning things that others see as normal. If I only need a jacket if I'm cold, is there some other way I can manage the problem of being cold? If the human foot when millions of years without shoes, are they really needed? If the human foot is as well adapted to walking and running as the evidence seems to indicate, what would happen if I kicked off my shoes for a while?

The common question other barefooters and I often get is "Why go barefoot?" To me, this question is the first sign of a misunderstanding. The question, as far as I'm concerned, really ought to be "Why wear shoes?"

In my quest for answers, I determined that I actually had no reasons of my own. I hate when that happens. The main reason I wore shoes was because I always had and so had everyone else I knew. That's a pretty lame excuse, right up there with "because!"

Why else wear shoes? Safety is a pretty common one, and also hard to ignore. The modern world has a lot of hazards for bare feet. Glass, nails, discarded needles, dog crap, etc. Well that's a bummer, I already found plenty of reasons to wear shoes. Time to adjust the question. If shoes are needed, what part of the shoe's function is really needed? A quick look over my list reveals: a sole. That's not much of a shoe. Once you bind that to your food with something you've got some form of sandal. Interesting. Is that the best we can do? Sandals are kind of thick soled and numbing, though, so maybe there's something better. Leather moccasins? That'd do the trick. Surely the human race has discovered or invented something better than that though. Oh look, an Italian company did, years ago. Vibram FiveFingers are a modern solution to my problem. A thin rubberized sole with just enough covering to keep the sole on. And the sole is so minimal it does absolutely nothing but protect your feed from little sharp things and scuffing. Sweet, problem solved. As a bonus, they're also light, which goes perfectly with my shorts and t-shirt habits.

Part of wearing such minimalist shoes is watching where you are stepping and adjusting your stride based on the excellent bio-feedback from your soles. I made a couple interesting observations during my first month of wearing my Vibram FiveFingers KSOs. First, my feet were losing their sensitivity. I could no longer feel the small details that at first were almost overwhelming. In hind sight, that should've been expected. The second observation was the breakthrough, however.

I saw hardly ANY of the barefoot hazards I was afraid of! I saw some broken glass at a bus stop, and.. actually, that's it. In a whole month, I saw one single hazard, and it was trivially avoidable. Well now... this might change some things. Some of my assumptions were wrong! Time to re-evaluate my decisions on footwear.

Taking into account what I'd observed myself and what others' had described of their experiences, I decided to take the plunge.

The result: I haven't found enough reasons yet to put my shoes back on. At least not full-time. I do wear shoes, of sorts, for certain occasions and locations. Since I'm such a minimalist and pragmatist, I follow Barefoot Moe's advice on backup footwear and I now carry a pair of $2 flip flops in the lower pockets of my shorts. In my case, I use these backup shoes for places that ask me to wear shoes and in public washrooms. Surprisingly few restaurants actually ask patrons to wear shoes. Equally surprising was that local public transit seems to require shoes (even though they don't post it anywhere but claim to). I went through a rebellious phase before realizing it was just too much effort. Especially since the point was to put less effort into my footwear.

What's next? It's an ongoing experiment. As new data is collected, I am regularly re-assessing the situation. I even have my next set of questions and challenges lined up! What about winter? If freezing is my threshold for wearing a jacket, what is my threshold for wearing shoes? And if I do need shoes, what is the minimum required shoe to address ONLY the temperature problem?

Next time I'll ramble on about some of the things I've learned and questions I thought I'd never ask.

My Latest Experiment: Living Barefoot

A couple months ago I read an article about the lack of science behind the modern running shoe. A lucky find in my random surfing. I sent it around and my friends and I talked about it for a bit and mused about what the ideal shoe would be like. Well it didn't take long to discover that several companies were already working on the ultimate minimalist shoe.

In short order I'd found a local retailer for Vibram FiveFingers and had a shiny new pair of KSOs to run around in. It didn't take long to wonder if I could wear the shoes full-time and with that curiosity came more surfing and searching. I was amazed at the number of people around the world who had sworn off shoes entirely, never mind the whole minimalist shoe concept. I was intrigued, to say the least.

I never did like shoes, and it was as if I'd suddenly been told I was right all along. Ya ya, don't believe everything you read, I know... but that begs the question of why do we wear shoes in the first place? I've always been one to question the status quo, so I did. As of this writing, I haven't worn shoes (flip flops, actually) for more than a few steps inside restaurants and public bathrooms in the last month. And that was after a full month of wearing my KSOs full-time.

My feet have changed shape, and I have started developing muscles below the knees the average person has no use for. When I say my feet have changes shape, I'm serious. After wearing KSOs for a few weeks, my Airwalks and New Balance runners started feeling very different. Tight across the toes and forefoot. Almost too tight to put on and certainly too tight to wear for any extended periods. At this point, I can honestly say that I don't even know if my "normal" shoes even fit me anymore!

Where was I? Oh ya... searching the intarwebs..

While in search of local barefooters (running, hiking, whatever!) to meet and learn from, I stumbled upon Al's meetup.com profile, which had a link in it to the Living Barefoot website. There I found forums and a small collective of barefooters from around the world. It's only a few months old, but it sure seems to be picking up in popularity. Oh, and how awesome is this, they are putting together The Living Barefoot Show. If the teaser is any indication, it promises to be a killer show.

After finding several excellent websites about the ins and outs of going barefoot, I was eager to find something in print. I soon learned that, at that time, such a book was mere weeks away from publishing. Born To Run is one of the best books I've read, on any topic. Granted, I don't read a lot of non-programming books, but it's still true. It's an excellent account of the author's journey into the world of ultra-running, minimalist footwear, and the idea that humans are actually natural born distance runners. As it turns out, that first article I read that got me started on this path was actually one of the chapters in this book.

So, if any of the two or three people following this blog have any secret desires to liberate their feet or even just meet some cool people, stop by the Living Barefoot Forums. I post as "Ryan".

If you're looking for great blogs by people on the forums, Barefoot Moe, Tina, and Barefoot Michael are all very active on the boards.