Barefoot Running

Every spring I get the urge to become a runner. I come off of nasty seasonal depression where I eat way too much cheese and bread and I take stock of all my athlete friends that go out jogging every day and talk about their runner's high and their awesome endurance and I feel a push to do the spring-dance that is running. It never lasts.

I'm not some lazy butt that just sits around and fantasizes about being athletic. I'm a very healthy person and I've always played sports. I swam competitively from the ages of 7-18, I played high school lacrosse for five years, I rowed crew in college for four and I am a champ at intramural and recreational sports. I can wakeboard, kayak, canoe, usually catch whatever is thrown at me. But I cannot run. When I played lacrosse I became the goalie during middle school try-outs so that I could get out of doing indian runs. (What is the PC term for indian runs these days? I don't mean to be offensive, I just really don't know what to call it.)

My problem is that I have screwy legs. Terrible knees, weak ankles, wobbly hips, I'm making it sound worse than it probably is, but they're unreliable enough that running has never been fun for me. After years of perpetually sprained ankles, torn ligaments in both knees, clicking and achy hips, there is too much evidence toward the fact that I am not made out to be a runner.

<shocking discovery>

UNTIL!!

</shocking discovery>

I'm jumping on the barefoot running bandwagon. Yesterday was day one. A beautiful day here in Brooklyn, temperature in the high fifties, sunny, windless, and the day after trash pickup so there was less than usual to dodge.

As part of my springtime -jogging-dance-plea to the gods I bought a pair of the Vibram Five Fingers running shoes.

They protect your feet from any rocks/glass/dog poo that might be around, but allow your body to run naturally which, I've learned recently, is actually something that traditional running shoes impairs. Sneakers (I'm from NY, they're not running shoes or tennis shoes or whatever else, they're sneakers) force your feet and ankles to remain relatively stiff, so when you run, you land with the majority of the impact on your heel, just like when you walk. The problem with this is that, (if you're doing it wrong, like I'm apt to and like a lot of amateur runners do) it sends all the force of your impact up through your weak ankles, bad knees and into your clicky hips, making everything just HURT.

The idea behind the barefoot running movement is that you do NOT need sneakers to run. This is a nike-brand misconception; millions of years of human evolution did not lead to a foot that can't run without artificial support. And, opposed to running form with sneakers, barefoot running is more natural, allowing your body to lean forward and take more of the impact on the ball of your foot instead of your heel. Where your foot is "stabilized" while in sneakers, barefoot running forces your body to work.

I have a friend who is a podiatry med student and also a runner who explained all of this science to me, so I should insert the disclaimer here that up until now, what I've written is all word of mouth, and personal opinion. There is tons of research, clinical studies, professional substantiation available online, but I'm just going to talk about my personal experience with them so far.

It hurt. Maaaan, but it was one of those good hurts, one of those "I can feel my body working and I LOVE it" hurts as opposed to the "ow, ow, ow" with every step that I feel when I run with sneakers. I'd been told that you have to start out slow with barefoot running; you're calling in to play muscles that have been coddled and underused from a lifetime of wearing shoes, you are drastically changing your form and you have...stuff... between your toes.

So my run yesterday was about 30 minutes long, but only about ten of that was actual running. I tend to do a kind of warm up, run for a song, walk for a song, style workout when I run with music (which makes it so much more fun). At first I was really feeling tight in my Achilles, but that loosed up after a few minutes. I definitely felt less stable than in sneakers, but the actual motion of running was infinitely more smooth- something I had never felt before. Usually when I run, I do a very painful death trot, yesterday everything was flowing and calm. I felt faster. It was nice.

Today I am definitely sore and part of that is the fact that I sat around and did very little exercise all winter, but part of it is definitely from previously under-used muscles being called on yesterday. I can feel it in my abs, lower back, a LOT in my calves, my hips and the arches of my feet. Everything feels nicely stretched out, especially my feet.

So as of day one, I am a convert. I don't have a bad thing to say about them except that they did feel weird at first, but I got used to it quickly, and they took some of the nail polish off my toes, but it was cheap stuff anyway.  So now I can be, not only "white girl out jogging in Bushwick", but "white girl out jogging in Bushwick with what the HELL is on her feet?!" I highly recommend.