The barefoot runner: Coming in from the cold
In the midst of Saturday’s snow and ice storm, Jon Hayden of Holly Springs went for an 18-mile run wearing a pair of $5 water shoes from Walmart. The water shoes, a thin glove of rubber and mesh intended for a hot summer day at the beach, were a concession: Hayden, a marathoner, prefers to run in his bare feet.
Why? It’s easier on his body.
To non-runners that may sound crazy. To a lot of runners it sounded crazy until Christopher McDougall made a compelling case for shedding your high-tech, high-price running shoes in “Born to Run.” Since its publication last year, “Born to Run” has been a must-read in the running community, especially among the estimated 40 percent to 60 percent of runners who are injured every year.
McDougall himself was a statistic, having aggravating his cuboid, “a cluster of bones parallel to the arch that I hadn’t even known existed until it reengineered itself into an internal Taser.” One of the nation’s top sports medicine experts told him to quit, to ride a bike instead, that the human body wasn’t designed for running. McDougall wasn’t ready to give up that easily. Besides, it didn’t make sense: “ ... why should every other animal on the planet be able to rely on its legs except us?” And why did some humans have absolutely no problem going out and running day after day? McDougall embarked on a quest to see if there wasn’t some way he could run injury free. He found his answer in the barefoot and sandal-clad Tarahumara runners of Mexico’s Copper Canyon.
Actually, he didn’t find answers so much as examples. The Tarahumara were capable of running extraordinary distances — 100 miles or more at a time — with no shoes, or minimalist footwear at best. They were able to run late in life, into their 80s and 90s, and they were able to do it virtually injury free. Last week’s study in the journal Nature — “Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot runners versus shod runners” — shed some light on why this might be.
Like similar studies in the past, the study lead by Dr. Daniel Lieberman with Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, found that barefoot runners tend to land on the forefoot, shod runners on their heels. What the Nature study added to the discussion was that running barefoot and landing on the forefoot reduces both the loading rate and peak impact force, both of which are thought to lead to greater risk of injury. Thus, the study suggests that people who run barefoot or with minimalist shoes such as the Nike Free have fewer injuries.
Hayden and other local runners say they didn’t need a study to tell them that.
“I was always battling some sort of injury after another,” says Hayden. “I have feet as flat as pancakes and am also an over-pronator.” To solve his problems he was told to invest in pricey motion-control shoes, such as the $130 Brooks Beast, a shoe that broke down quickly and had to be replaced every 400 miles.
“But the shoes did nothing to prevent the injuries or the sore knees,” he says.
Research lead him to barefoot running. He stuck his toe in tentatively, tacking a quarter mile of barefoot running to the end of his training runs. As he built up calluses, he extended his barefoot mileage. Before long he was running 8- to 10-miles a day barefoot, donning shoes only for his weekend trail runs (“I still haven't been able to run barefoot on rocky, rooty trails and am not sure if I ever will.”). In October, he ran a half marathon barefoot. During his barefoot tenure he’s had no injuries.
“Running barefoot forces you to run with good form and gives you immediate feedback if you’re running wrong,” says Hayden. That instant correction of bad form is what prevents injury, he says. You don’t necessarily have to be barefoot for that to happen.
Josh Sutcliffe: Injury free since shucking the shoes.
That, agrees Josh Sutcliffe of Madison (“45 minutes straight north of downtown Greensboro”) is the crux of the issue. Sutcliffe started running in 1999, was soon doing respectable 23-minute 5Ks. In 2003, he developed ITB — iliotibial band syndrome, or pain and inflammation of the outer knee — and went looking for help. His search led him to the Web site of barefoot running guru Ken Bob Saxton. Last March, Sutcliffe finally gave barefoot running a try; since July he has run 500 miles sans shoes. He, too, has been injury free since.
“My bare feet teach me how to run smoothly by providing instant feedback about the conditions of the surface I’m running on,” says Sutcliffe, who keeps a blog on barefoot running, barefootjosh.com. “You don’t need to be barefoot, or even in minimalist shoes, to alter the way your foot lands. But if you don’t understand how to be smooth, my guess is you’re still risking injury, regardless of what part of your foot hits the ground first.”
Nike's Waffle Trainer: The shoe to have in the mid-1970s.
In “Born to Run,” McDougall says our distraction from this smooth, natural way of running began in the early 1970s with the introduction of the modern running shoe, specifically Nike’s Waffle Trainer. Born on the waffle press of University of Oregon running coach Bill Bowerman, the shoe had a cushy heel that encouraged runners to foresake the forefoot strike favored by humans the previous 2 million years in favor of a stride-lengthening heel strike. This sudden heel-strike business was new to the foot, the ankle, the knee and assorted other body parts that have responded, McDougall writes, by breaking down.
Triangle-area running coach Bob Dannegger says another recent study, published in the December issue of PM&R, the journal of the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, supports that notion. “They concluded that increased joint torques at the hip, knee, and ankle were observed with running shoes compared with running barefoot.” However, he adds, the study did not determine whether that increased torque led to injuries, “but it’s highly probable it eventually would for many runners.”
Determining whether that increased torque does lead to injuries, most agree, is the next step in vetting the merits of running barefoot.
The Science of Sport Web site cites a study in Cape Town, South Africa in which runners had their footstrike patterns altered to more of a barefoot style with two weeks of training. A biomechanical analysis found the forefoot strike did indeed lower the impact force and created less stress on the knee. Yet after two weeks of running using the new forestrike approach, 19 of the 20 study participants were injured because their calves and ankles couldn’t handle the sudden change.
“If you wish to guarantee yourself an injury, then go out for a 2km run barefoot on a hard surface, and you will be asking your calf muscles and Achilles tendons to do work that for perhaps 30 years they haven’t had to do, writes Ross Tucker, who has a Ph.D in exercise physiology and runs the Science of Sport site with Jonathan Dugas.
“It’s intriguing,” Tucker writes of the Nature study, “and certainly does suggest advantages to barefoot running. It is not the last word, but rather the latest word in this debate.”
Tomorrow: Intrigued by running barefoot? A look at how to make the transition or incorporate it into your running routine.
Sources: HealthDay, an online publication of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health; The Science of Sports Web site; Biomechanics of Foot Strikes & Applications to Running Barefoot or in Minimal Footwear Web site, by Dr. Daniel E. Lieberman, Madhusudhan Venkadesan, Adam I. Daoud and William A. Werbel.
24 Comments
Josh says:
ReplyNice write-up!
One correction, depending on how one defines "injury." I gave myself a really bad blister running the Mistletoe half that put me on the couch for a month. 40 degrees + rain + winds from the north + PR by 14 minutes + hilly course = in over my feet. I made some rookie mistakes in an advanced level situation. I tend to overdo things.
I make the mistakes, so you don't have to!
But that has been it. My body feels much less abused.
But the whole "injury" aspect is just my excuse. I really run barefoot because it's enjoyable. And faster - I took three minutes off of my shod 5K PR.
