Running Naturally

I used to love to run.

I started running in about seventh grade, when I was pressured by my Dad to join the track team. I wasn't fast by any stretch, so I always felt that any chance I had was to be found in the distance events. Over the course of my seventh grade season, until I quit due to injury, I found I wasn't so good at those, either.

However, during the summer before eighth grade, I really wanted to get in some kind of shape for football, and decided to bike down to the track most mornings for a two-mile run. Before I knew it, running two miles in 15:00 was a breeze. From then on, I ran long distances regularly - even as a football player - and it was easy. My stride was natural. I was never injured. By my senior year, when I ran a 5:06 1600m (still stings, as I know had I focused on that event, I'd have broken 5:00) and a 11:03 3200m, running felt effortless and free. I loved that feeling.

Then I lost it.

I went to college. I ran less. I got heavier. My knees started to hurt. My hips started to hurt. So, I bought heavier, more cushioned, more supportive shoes. (I'd always worn lightweight shoes before.) And my knees got worse, and my hips got worse, and it all became a lot less fun.

A few months ago, I read Born to Run, by Chris McDougall. I'd read articles by him and others on these general topics before, but this was the first time I'd seen it all put together. (And in a very fun read, too.)

The general theme of the book is that homo sapiens are designed to be distance runners, and our biomechanics are such that do that distance running best in as natural an environment as possible. Really, the only unnatural part of our current running environment is the shoes we wear. (As a side note, it's not concrete or asphalt, as we've been running on much harder granite trails for millennia, apparently.) Modern running shoes are a very recent invention; prior to the last fifty years or so, we ran in light leather slippers, basically, or barefoot. And we didn't have nearly the number or severity of running injuries we see today. Part of this book explores the reasons for this, and comes back to largely blaming the shoes.

These shoes were largely the product of a desire to change our natural running gait by allowing us to "stride out." The proponent of the jogging boom (Lydiard?) thought that if people could land on their heels, they could take longer strides and run more efficiently. The first modern running shoes were designed to allow this heel strike, which you could never do in leather slippers. The problem, we now know, is that this heel strike takes us outside the way our body is designed to run. The cushioned shoes, which make it more difficult for our sensitive feet to sense the ground, actually force us to step down harder, sending more force up through our joints, joints that are now in an unnatural and dangerous position due to this new running form incorporating heel strikes. When your body acts in an unnatural way, the risk and incidence of injury increases dramatically.

I was hooked. It made too much sense. I am, after all, an aerospace engineer by training - operating the human running machine within the confines of its intended use seemed logical. However, I was not about to start running barefoot. It takes a long time to get your feet conditioned for such abuse (or reconditioned - if we never put on shoes in the first place, we'd probably be fine). It seemed somewhat dangerous, particularly as I do most of my running on concrete or asphalt (and broken Michigan roads, at that) to be running around barefoot.

One of the people discussed in the book - Barefoot Ted McDonald - often runs in Vibram FiveFingers. I'd seen these crazy shoes before, and thought they were nuts. They looked like something aimed at hippies with $100 burning a hole in their pocket. They are basically a thin rubber slipper for the bottom of your foot - no padding, no arch support. There's enough rubber to make sure you won't cut your foot, and it's designed to flex where your foot flexes. There are five separate pockets, one for each toe. They're weird. The idea of using them as running shoes seemed ludicrous, whatever Barefoot Ted might say. Nevertheless, after reading Born to Run, I was intrigued enough to experiment.

So, I started running the 1.25 miles to the high school track, which surrounds a nice artificial football field. Once there, I'd strip off my shoes and socks, and at normal running pace, run 100-yard repeats on the field. As I did this, the strangest thing happened.

My form changed. My hips came forward. My stride shortened, but became lighter and quicker. I started landing, first without my heels touching at all, and then as I relaxed into the form that came naturally, with a rolling ball-to-heel landing that left my entire foot on the ground ready to propel me forward, but without the shock of a heel strike. My knees stopped hurting. My hips stopped hurting.

Even when I ran back afterwards, I tried to maintain that naked running form. It took more of a concious effort, but when I did it, it felt wonderful.

I bought my own Vibrams, some black KSOs, shortly thereafter. I started out running to the track in regular shoes, running a mile in the Vibrams, and then running home. Before long, though, I was out running two, three, or even five miles on my neighborhood's broken streets in the Vibrams. And my knees don't hurt, my hips don't hurt, and I haven't looked back.

Do I think that switching to Vibrams is the answer for everyone? No, not necessarily. Nor do I think running shoes are a problem for everyone. But this experiment made running fun, natural, and easy for me again, and if you have any curiosity about this at all, I recommend you go find a nice grassy field, and go for a run.