Relentless Forward Progress_ A Guide to Running Ultramarathons - Bryon Powell [84]
Doctors were right, I couldn’t run again, until I began running barefoot. I started with only a couple hundred yards, running up light on my forefoot (as if I were running uphill) and then working on foot-strengthening exercises on the way back. Feeling the ground, something special happened: My feet grew strong and I found an extra-light stride, one that didn’t stress my joints. I found a way to get balanced and to heal.
Through barefoot running I healed to where I’m once again running “around the block” silly distances, but this time with less effort and fatigue than ever before. My feet have gotten stronger—as podiatrists said, “I grew an arch.” And by running barefoot, I’ve tapped into the energy and technique of indigenous people of the past, people who ran without shoes, or without modern shoes, longer and farther than we may ever run.
No matter the distance, desire, or terrain on which you train, if you want to run far, stay healthy, get strong, and run free, then you can benefit from barefoot running and barefoot training.
How Does Barefoot Running Help?
First, when you run barefoot, you’re running awarefoot. That means you’re waking up all the nerve endings on the bottom of your feet. This helps you when you’re barefoot to discover your lightest stride possible, which you’ll carry back into your shoe. It also helps you develop the vestibular system (balance mechanism) of the body, helping you run better on uneven terrain and surfaces, run with less chance of falling, or of rolling or twisting an ankle. The more we wake up this awareness, the more we dance, rather than trod along the trails. A 100-mile dance with nature sounds much better than a 100-mile slog, now doesn’t it?
Second, when you run barefoot, you quickly find heel striking to be a big no-no. The first time you hit your heel on the ground barefoot, you stop, or go home. In 2009 Dr. Daniel Lieberman of Harvard University published a study that found runners hit the ground on average three times harder in a shoe than out of a shoe, and with an initial impact force, or impact transient (shock wave), that’s virtually non-existent out of a shoe.
Why’s that? Because when we’re out of a shoe we tend to land on our forefoot, using the entire foot and leg, from our bow-shaped metatarsals, to our arches (which can grow quite strong) to our Achilles tendon (the only tendon capable of holding 2,000 pounds of force) to our calves, quads, hamstrings, and glutes as a fantastic 2-to-3-foot-long shock absorber or spring-like mechanism. Strengthen the spring, lean forward slightly as you run (without bending at the waist), and gravity does the work of carrying you forward. Conversely, land with your heels, or even midfoot, and something dramatically different happens. The foot and leg no longer act as a spring and shock absorber, but instead as a transmitter of impact. With each step we hit the brakes, robbing ourselves of valuable kinetic energy, and instead send a shock wave straight up through our feet, legs, knees, hips, into our backs, and up through our shoulders and our necks.
If we want to run light, or to run like the Kenyans, Ethiopians, or Tarahumara, then we need to learn how to land on our forefoot— something barefoot running naturally promotes. Once we learn this technique, we can carry it back into a shoe, although chances are we’ll use a slightly different one, one that’s closer to the ground, doesn’t have a high heel to throw off our center of gravity or how we hit the ground, and that’s more flexible and lets us “feel” the ground.
Baby-Step Your Way into Running Light and Free
With the recent explosion in popularity of barefoot running due to the runaway best seller Born to Run, it’s tempting to just shed your shoes and go the distance barefoot. One would assume we’d be able to run light and fast