Barefoot Running

This is Tarzan posting:

When I got home from Uruguay is when I started really taking up long distance running. My sister invited me to a race (crazy bob's bair gutsman) which is a climb straight up the mountain in Farmington. I still had my missionary legs, and the hill was so steep that I just kept a fast walk and I did pretty good. I loved it, I was hooked to long distance running. I have since run various races, half marathon being my favorite distance. I have only run one marathon, but I will be running the St. George marathon this year. After i started running I decided that I should get some good equipment, so I bought a fancy new pair of running shoes, price around $110. I had been running with $30 shoes. I felt like I had noticed a difference. I had to train myself to run on my heel, I thought that was the way it was supposed to be done for long distance. I had always run on my toes, and I thought that was because of my gymnastics and sprinting. The recommended life for a pair of fancy running shoes is about 500 miles. When my first pair started to wear out my knees started to hurt, so I bought a new pair and the pain went away. It happened again this year, in January my right knee started to really bother me while I was running. I wasn't sure if it was because there were more hills in Utah than in Wyoming or if my shoes were wearing out. I was afraid that I was getting illoitibial band syndrome, and it kind of hurt. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a new pair of shoes, and I was kind of bugged that my knees were hurting.

Enter barefoot running. I have been reading about this for about a year, and it has really interested me, mostly because I am a fan of natural motions, and I believe firmly that the human body is very well designed and that we should work with our body rather than try to force it. I have been surprised at some of the things that I have read about with the development of modern running shoes. I read the book "Born to run: a hidden tribe, super athletes, and the greatest race the world has never seen" and I really liked it. A lot of the things he talked about resonated with me. I would recommend the book for anybody interested in long distance running. The gist that I am experimenting with now is that humans are designed to run long distances, and they were designed to do so by running on their toes, not on their heels. An short but interesting video about a Harvard study shows why here. When properly trained, humans can outrun deer, horsed, antelope, pretty much humans can beat every other animal in a 50 mile race. We were designed that way.

Running barefoot on feet that have been shod for years can be painful, so I am working on strengthening my feet. I have been walking around barefoot on gravel and wood chips around the playground outside our house, and I have been running in my worn-out pair of converse allstars, that give me a pretty good feel for running barefoot. I have been on a few runs, I started with a couple short 3 - 5 mile runs and then I tried an easy 10 miles, focusing on staying off of my heels. My knee has not hurt at all. It's kind of funny, I was wearing my dress shoes and had to run for about a block and my knee really hurt again, but running on my toes barefoot style I get no pain. Well, when I say no pain I mean no pain in my knees, my calves are taking a bit to adjust, after the 10 miler I could barely walk because my calves were sore. I love it! I'm working towards going completely barefoot, I have been considering making a pair of sandals called huarachas for running as close to barefoot as I can get without actually being barefoot.