2015-05-29 Born to Run

I’ve recently read Born to Run and it really makes me want to run more. A while ago we started training for 10km runs and these days we moved to training for a half marathon. This book is about 50 miles runs and 100 miles runs, however. It’s also about buying cheaper shoes, eating healthier, running more, and people living in remote areas of the world that still run for hours on end. This book really makes me want to run more.

Born to Run

Beyond all the people that love to run making an appearance in the book, I think it was the statement that humans are made for running and that some of the greatest runners don’t need expensive shoes, training, workouts, plans, and any of that. We are born to run, and so you can just start, on your bare feet if you must. Just start small and work your way up.

There is a passage where a woman likes to run, starts to run on lunch breaks and ends up running 15 miles to the office and back every single working day.

The book is not about tips but about the joy of running. Works for me! 🙂

One of the persons mentioned* in the book was Barefoot Ted. It turns out he now has a shop and sells the running sandals he saw the natives make from old car tires in Mexico. Yesterday, I bought some from a Swiss web shop. That’s how excited I am. At first, the order didn’t go through. I typed a comment into a chat window, got a response, got a call and had a friendly chat with the guy running the web shop. What a surprise to talk to the people running a web shop.

sells the running sandals

from a Swiss web shop

If you’re wondering about the use of *sandals* for running, you can find a summary of what the author of *Born to Run* had to say on his website: the barefoot running debate. It convinced me because of a few things:

the barefoot running debate

1. I had already heard about humans (and wolves) being the only animals that can run any other animal to death because we’re best at cooling ourselves as we run

2. Not landing on our heels while running makes sense once you consider that humans have had to rely on the bare feet for so long – homo erectus knew how to make a fire, knew how to hunt and walked and ran like us, nearly two million years ago

3. Landing on your heels when running barefoot *hurts*

4. I had already practiced running on my forefoot when I was in my early twenties because a friend suggested it as a remedy to my knee pains; my heels still touch the ground when I run, I just don’t *land* on them

homo erectus

running on my forefoot

There’s plenty of stuff on YouTube.

1min slow motion video showing some feet touching the ground
2min of Haile Gebrselassie running in slow motion, barefoot & shod
short nearly 7min intro to the ideas in *Born to Run*, by various people
on posture, rhythm and forefoot running in 10min (includes an ad for a shoe)
a very long 52min talk at Google by the author of *Born to Run* and an interesting questions & answers section at the end
Human Mammal, Human Hunter - Attenborough - Life of Mammals - BBC shows how persistence hunting works

1min slow motion video

2min of Haile Gebrselassie running in slow motion

short nearly 7min intro

on posture, rhythm and forefoot running in 10min

a very long 52min talk at Google

Human Mammal, Human Hunter - Attenborough - Life of Mammals - BBC

If you're already running*, switching from heel striking to forefoot running is *dangerous*. I’m guessing that if you’re running 20km a week or more, switching shoes and style is going to be brutal. You have muscles in all the wrong places. I was lucky. We didn’t run. Claudia gave up dancing and was looking for something to do. A friend suggested running. Claudia was skeptical at first because one of the reasons she had stopped dancing was the pain in her feet. But we tried it. I bought some shoes. She bought some shoes. We started with a “recovery” training plan that started with 20min runs and worked our way up. Since we both started basically at zero, I was spared a sudden change in style. If you’re going to switch, I suggest to run 19km a week using your old style and your old shoes, and just run 1km using forefoot running. Switch style as fast as you learned to run in the first place.

Claudia

Additional reading:

Biomechanics of Foot Strikes & Applications to Running Barefoot or in Minimal Footwear from the Skeletal Bio Lab at Harvard claims to be an “evidence-based resource” – I need to read those pages!
Daniel Lieberman, 10 Years After “Born to Run” with an interview

Biomechanics of Foot Strikes & Applications to Running Barefoot or in Minimal Footwear

Daniel Lieberman, 10 Years After “Born to Run”

#Running #Life

Comments

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I bought the lunasports sandals last year, they’re really nice and pleasant to wear (I usually don’t like to wear sandals). Not much of a runner, but let me know how you like them long term 🙃

– Harald 2015-05-30 17:59 UTC

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Let’s hope I can do some serious running with them. 😃

– Alex Schroeder 2015-05-31 20:28 UTC

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I think I’m doing ok. This is great.

About 8.5km in about 70min. A slow run.

https://alexschroeder.ch/pics/17935897903_aa615b387b_z.jpg

– Alex Schroeder 2015-06-07 11:48 UTC

Alex Schroeder

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And another run, yesterday. A bit more than 7km. I think these sandals are a keeper.

– Alex Schroeder 2015-06-09 06:23 UTC

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I’ve been running more and more using the sandals. I think I’m getting used to them!

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/472/19182971325_d4b116aa5b_z.jpg

1. 8 kilometers is about 8.6 miles, according to Google.

- Alex Schroeder 2015-06-26 19:10 UTC