Running Barefoot

Recently I have been thinking about improving my running technique as I have been concerned that I cannot run on the road without hurting my knees.

A Discovery

When I run on sand and grass and it seeemed a lot better on my knee.  But I still felt that something was not right..

Yesterday I was talking to the guys in the office about technique and one of the guys said why don't you go barefoot, and sent me this link  I read through it and was quite surprised with the hypothesis put forward.

I am a huge proponent of Darwinism and the theory of evolution and I thought that by now we would have evolved our feet to work nicely with those fancy asics gel shoes that we all wear.  Anyway I digress. The website reminded me about this documentary I watched a few years back showing how the bushmen of the Kalahari dessert hunt.  These guys are armed with a short spear and they chase their prey for hours on foot, once the prey is tired and cannot move anymore they will kill it and then walk back with the bounty.

I thought to myself there is something in this, and decided to trial it myself, despite the threat of dog poo, weeds, glass etc.

The next post will elaborate more on the body and understanding it, so I will not get into that now. I spent 3hrs at night studying different websites to look at foot strike on the ground.  A lot of sites looked at how Kenyan school kids run, sans shoes and how they run with shoes as a consequence.

Running Barefoot

Major difference between running with shoes and barefoot is how your hit the ground, with shoes you tend to use the heel more often, and this is what causes knee pain, hamstrings to work harder and you tend to use up more energy. Barefoot on the other hand seems to let the foot strike at the front or the middle and cushions the legs from impact, making it more natural.  Only downside is it seems to make your calf muscles work harder.

Day 1

• I have never run this effortlessly, I could have kept going around in circles infintum
• There is NO knee pain (should I pinch myself?)
• I ran back home barefoot on the pavement and road
• Grass had stained my foot soles an eecky green
• At night I went to see a movie and started to feel pain in my calves

Day 2 

• Woke up ready for my run and ooh my calves hurt, ummed and ah'd and decided to do it
• It was a lot cooler this morning temp would have been about 13degrees C, and the grass must have been watered overnight as it was very wet - this did numb my feet and I doubt I will be able to do this over winter, could get frost bite?
• Run was again easy but after 3kms the calves started really hurting, problem with reading too much is it introduces worry, I had read that I could get tears on the calf muscle or risk an achilles tendon injury.  Ignorance is truly bliss sometimes
• I walked back to the pavement and then ran home

Day 3 

• Woke up ready for my run and my calves were so bad I could not even walk down the stairs
• I still did 3kms but like the previous day did not press on
• Tomorrow will definately be back to shoes

I now plan to run barefoot 3 times a week this month, what is the point? I am trying to teach my body to change how I run, so when I next don my running shoes I hope to strike the ground as if I am barefoot, I am hoping this will make me run not only faster and longer but more important it will help me run on the road without that niggling knee pain.

I have looked at fivefingers, a kind of sock/shoe I can wear to stop making my foot look like Shrek but I cannot justify buying them from hte local Aussie website as they are $185 AUD, whereas in the US they are $85 USD - more a question of princple than the money, so I plan to order them in from the US next week.

 

 

update 16 November 2010

I ended up not getting the vibrams and also have stopped running barefoot. I will link a post here as to why and what went wrong. In the meantime if you want to get fivefingers for sand running or any other sport and you are based in Perth a friend of mine - Jane who is the editor of Flourish Magazine is selling them for $150 AUD - more details on her website  http://www.flourishmagazine.com.au/news/2010/11/18/vibram-five-fingers.html

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