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It's All About the feet: An Extract from Born to Run

Posted by Eric Orton on April 23, 2009 at 9:00am
Well, I was planning to write a post today on the importance of foot strength for improved running performance and injury prevention. And then Chris sent me an extract from Born to Run. So, I will let his words speak for me - E At Stanford University, California, two sales representatives from Nike were watching the athletics team practise. Part of their job was to gather feedback from the company's sponsored runners about which shoes they preferred. Unfortunately, it was proving difficult that day as the runners all seemed to prefer... nothing. 'Didn't we send you enough shoes?' they asked head coach Vin Lananna. They had, he was just refusing to use them. 'I can't prove this,' the well-respected coach told them. 'But I believe that when my runners train barefoot they run faster and suffer fewer injuries.' Nike sponsored the Stanford team as they were the best of the very best. Needless to say, the reps were a little disturbed to hear that Lananna felt the best shoes they had to offer them were not as good as no shoes at all. When I was told this anecdote it came as no surprise. I'd spent years struggling with a variety of running-related injuries, each time trading up to more expensive shoes, which seemed to make no difference. I'd lost count of the amount of money I'd handed over at shops and sports-injury clinics - eventually ending with advice from my doctor to give it up and 'buy a bike'. And I wasn't on my own. Every year, anywhere from 65 to 80 per cent of all runners suffer an injury. No matter who you are, no matter how much you run, your odds of getting hurt are the same. It doesn't matter if you're male or female, fast or slow, pudgy or taut as a racehorse, your feet are still in the danger zone. But why? How come Roger Bannister could charge out of his Oxford lab every day, pound around a hard cinder track in thin leather slippers, not only getting faster but never getting hurt, and set a record before lunch? Then there's the secretive Tarahumara tribe, the best long-distance runners in the world. These are a people who live in basic conditions in Mexico, often in caves without running water, and run with only strips of old tyre or leather thongs strapped to the bottom of their feet. They are virtually barefoot. Come race day, the Tarahumara don't train. They don't stretch or warm up. They just stroll to the starting line, laughing and bantering, and then go for it, ultra-running for two full days, sometimes covering over 300 miles, non-stop. For the fun of it. One of them recently came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing nothing but a toga and sandals. He was 57 years old. When it comes to preparation, the Tarahumara prefer more of a Mardi Gras approach. In terms of diet, lifestyle and training technique, they're a track coach's nightmare. They drink like New Year's Eve is a weekly event, tossing back enough corn-based beer and homemade tequila brewed from rattlesnake corpses to floor an army. Unlike their Western counterparts, the Tarahumara don't replenish their bodies with electrolyte-rich sports drinks. They don't rebuild between workouts with protein bars; in fact, they barely eat any protein at all, living on little more than ground corn spiced up by their favourite delicacy, barbecued mouse. How come they're not crippled? I've watched them climb sheer cliffs with no visible support on nothing more than an hour's sleep and a stomach full of pinto beans. It's as if a clerical error entered the stats in the wrong columns. Shouldn't we, the ones with state-of-the-art running shoes and custom-made orthotics, have the zero casualty rate, and the Tarahumara, who run far more, on far rockier terrain, in shoes that barely qualify as shoes, be constantly hospitalised? The answer, I discovered, will make for unpalatable reading for the $20 billion trainer-manufacturing industry. It could also change runners' lives forever. Dr Daniel Lieberman, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University, has been studying the growing injury crisis in the developed world for some time and has come to a startling conclusion: 'A lot of foot and knee injuries currently plaguing us are caused by people running with shoes that actually make our feet weak, cause us to over-pronate (ankle rotation) and give us knee problems. 'Until 1972, when the modern athletic shoe was invented, people ran in very thin-soled shoes, had strong feet and had a much lower incidence of knee injuries.' Lieberman also believes that if modern trainers never existed more people would be running. And if more people ran, fewer would be suffering from heart disease, hypertension, blocked arteries, diabetes, and most other deadly ailments of the Western world. 'Humans need aerobic exercise in order to stay healthy,' says Lieberman. 'If there's any magic bullet to make human beings healthy, it's to run.' The modern running shoe was essentially invented by Nike. The company was founded in the Seventies by Phil Knight, a University of Oregon runner, and Bill Bowerman, the University of Oregon coach. Before these two men got together, the modern running shoe as we know it didn't exist. Runners from Jesse Owens through to Roger Bannister all ran with backs straight, knees bent, feet scratching back under their hips. They had no choice: their only shock absorption came from the compression of their legs and their thick pad of midfoot fat. Thumping down on their heels was not an option. Despite all their marketing suggestions to the contrary, no manufacturer has ever invented a shoe that is any help at all in injury prevention Bowerman didn't actually do much running. He only started to jog a little at the age of 50, after spending time in New Zealand with Arthur Lydiard, the father of fitness running and the most influential distance-running coach of all time. Bowerman came home a convert, and in 1966 wrote a best-selling book whose title introduced a new word and obsession to the fitness-aware public: Jogging. In between writing and coaching, Bowerman came up with the idea of sticking a hunk of rubber under the heel of his pumps. It was, he said, to stop the feet tiring and give them an edge. With the heel raised, he reasoned, gravity would push them forward ahead of the next man. Bowerman called Nike's first shoe the Cortez - after the conquistador who plundered the New World for gold and unleashed a horrific smallpox epidemic. It is an irony not wasted on his detractors. In essence, he had created a market for a product and then created the product itself. 'It's genius, the kind of stuff they study in business schools,' one commentator said. Bowerman's partner, Knight, set up a manufacturing deal in Japan and was soon selling shoes faster than they could come off the assembly line. 'With the Cortez's cushioning, we were in a monopoly position probably into the Olympic year, 1972,' Knight said. The rest is history. The company's annual turnover is now in excess of $17 billion and it has a major market share in over 160 countries. Since then, running-shoe companies have had more than 30 years to perfect their designs so, logically, the injury rate must be in freefall by now. After all, Adidas has come up with a $250 shoe with a microprocessor in the sole that instantly adjusts cushioning for every stride. Asics spent $3 million and eight years (three more years than it took to create the first atomic bomb) to invent the Kinsei, a shoe that boasts 'multi-angled forefoot gel pods', and a 'midfoot thrust enhancer'. Each season brings an expensive new purchase for the average runner. But at least you know you'll never limp again. Or so the leading companies would have you believe. Despite all their marketing suggestions to the contrary, no manufacturer has ever invented a shoe that is any help at all in injury prevention. If anything, the injury rates have actually ebbed up since the Seventies - Achilles tendon blowouts have seen a ten per cent increase. (It's not only shoes that can create the problem: research in Hawaii found runners who stretched before exercise were 33 per cent more likely to get hurt.) In a paper for the British Journal Of Sports Medicine last year, Dr Craig Richards, a researcher at the University of Newcastle in Australia, revealed there are no evidence-based studies that demonstrate running shoes make you less prone to injury. Not one. It was an astonishing revelation that had been hidden for over 35 years. Dr Richards was so stunned that a $20 billion industry seemed to be based on nothing but empty promises and wishful thinking that he issued the following challenge: 'Is any running-shoe company prepared to claim that wearing their distance running shoes will decrease your risk of suffering musculoskeletal running injuries? Is any shoe manufacturer prepared to claim that wearing their running shoes will improve your distance running performance? If you are prepared to make these claims, where is your peer-reviewed data to back it up?' Dr Richards waited and even tried contacting the major shoe companies for their data. In response, he got silence. So, if running shoes don't make you go faster and don't stop you from getting hurt, then what, exactly, are you paying for? What are the benefits of all those microchips, thrust enhancers, air cushions, torsion devices and roll bars? The answer is still a mystery. And for Bowerman's old mentor, Arthur Lydiard, it all makes sense. 'We used to run in canvas shoes,' he said. 'We didn't get plantar fasciitis (pain under the heel); we didn't pronate or supinate (land on the edge of the foot); we might have lost a bit of skin from the rough canvas when we were running marathons, but generally we didn't have foot problems. 'Paying several hundred dollars for the latest in hi-tech running shoes is no guarantee you'll avoid any of these injuries and can even guarantee that you will suffer from them in one form or another. Shoes that let your foot function like you're barefoot - they're the shoes for me.' Soon after those two Nike sales reps reported back from Stanford, the marketing team set to work to see if it could make money from the lessons it had learned. Jeff Pisciotta, the senior researcher at Nike Sports Research Lab, assembled 20 runners on a grassy field and filmed them running barefoot. When he zoomed in, he was startled by what he found. Instead of each foot clomping down as it would in a shoe, it behaved like an animal with a mind of its own - stretching, grasping, seeking the ground with splayed toes, gliding in for a landing like a lake-bound swan. 'It's beautiful to watch,' Pisciotta later told me. 'That made us start thinking that when you put a shoe on, it starts to take over some of the control.' Pisciotta immediately deployed his team to gather film of every existing barefoot culture they could find. 'We found pockets of people all over the globe who are still running barefoot, and what you find is that, during propulsion and landing, they have far more range of motion in the foot and engage more of the toe. Their feet flex, spread, splay and grip the surface, meaning you have less pronation and more distribution of pressure.' Nike's response was to find a way to make money off a naked foot. It took two years of work before Pisciotta was ready to unveil his masterpiece. It was presented in TV ads that showed Kenyan runners padding along a dirt trail, swimmers curling their toes around a starting block, gymnasts, Brazilian capoeira dancers, rock climbers, wrestlers, karate masters and beach soccer players. And then comes the grand finale: we cut back to the Kenyans, whose bare feet are now sporting some kind of thin shoe. It's the new Nike Free, a shoe thinner than the old Cortez dreamt up by Bowerman in the Seventies. And its slogan? 'Run Barefoot.' The price of this return to nature? A conservative £65. But, unlike the real thing, experts may still advise you to change them every three months. Edited extract from 'Born To Run' by Christopher McDougall.
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Running with the Tarahumara Indians - Part I

Posted by Eric Orton on April 18, 2009 at 10:30pm
The Race Director, Caballo Blanco, called us the Dream Team! Most likely because of the unbelievable running talent all crammed into a 1960 school bus headed for the depths of the Copper Canyon. For me, Dream Team meant something else. I was living my dream of running and learning from the famed Tarahumara Indians. I have "tried" to study these runners for years, finding tidbits here and there, hearing stories about the '94 Leadville race. So when Chris McDougall asked if I would be interested in coaching him as part of a book about these great runners and participate in the Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon (CCUM), I jumped! First I had the task of preparing Chris for the race, his first 50 miler. His preparation could not have gone better thanks to his devoted training and trust in "my way". As this first unfolded, the plan was for Chris and I to head down to the Copper Canyon, hook up with Caballo Blanco, the race director of the CCUM, and run the race with the Indians. As we got closer to the race and our departure, The Dream Team was formed. Now, Scott Jurek, Jenn Shelton, Billy Barnett, Luis Escobar, and Barefoot Ted were all planning to meet Chris and I in El Paso, and head to the Copper Canyon. Well, the book is finally out, Born to Run. So instead of recount our adventure in words, go read the book. What I thought I would do however, is to chronical our journey with some images that might create an intimate feel to the masterful words of Chris McDougall.

The Dream Team riding on top of the bus on our way to Batopilas

The view from the back of the bus

Somewhere down there is Batopilas....way down there!

Touching down in Batopilas, Jenn immediately makes friends!

Once we had our first night of sleep in the Town of Batopilas, we hit the trails with Caballo. The next few images are of this first trail run. After much travel, it was needed!

Thats Caballo, Scott, Jenn, and Billy

Billy running the rugged trails of the Batopilas Canyon

Chris and Luis all ears for Caballo "speak"

Great shot from the Batopilas Canyon

Copping some shade

After our stay in Batopilas, we prepared for our 30 mile journey up and over the canyon and into Urique. The anticipation was mounting, as we would welcome the indians of the Batopilas tribe to make the trek with us and "show us the way" to Urique. Below is our sherpa burro, as we loaded all of our gear onto the burro for transport to Urique.

Stay tuned for Part II - The Trek
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Barefoot Recovery - Be like a Kenyan

Posted by Eric Orton on April 18, 2009 at 9:00pm
Yesterday I received an email question from one of my new athletes. She is training for her first 50 miler at the Big Horn. Her question was about her slow pace on her easy days. Specifically, it went, "should I be running this slow?" My answer was a big fat YES! I explain to her that this slow pace had several purposes: - to allow for adequate recovery between harder, key workout days - to allow your weekly mileage to be higher and more consistent without added too much fatigue - and it is a great time to enjoy being out and work on great running form I gave her an example from the Kenyans. Kenyans are known for their hard training, but what sometimes gets lost in all of this focus is their recovery efforts. They are VERY SLOW. It is not uncommon for them to run almost 5 minutes per mile slower than their race pace. To put this into perspective, do the math. If you are a 6 minute per mile 10ker, your recovery effort should be near an 11 minute mile. Now pace is all releative to ones ability and an 11 minute mile may be fast for some, for this runner it is very slow. I often witness runners running way to hard on their easy days and recovery days. This is typically one of the bigger adjustments my athletes need to make mentally when first starting a coaching program. They are surprised at how easy they run on easy days and how hard they run on harder days. This is especially the case for trail runners who run hilly terrain all of the time. Eventually, all of their efforts can morph into one moderate pace due to the terrain, causing very subtle fatigue at first, and through time, can become too much cumulative fatigue and cause performance problems when harder training is needed. Another great way to become "okay" with running really easy on your easy days is to start running barefoot to strengthen your feet. This is something I prescribe in my Training Packages and with my athletes. Recovery days are great to head to your nearest turf field or manicured golf course for a 20-30 minute barefoot run. Foot strength is essential for proper running form, bomber leg strength, and injury prevention. If you do not have turf close by, I use Vibram Five Fingers for my barefoot runs and are awesome on any running surface, especially nice soft grass and trails. During the spring here in the Tetons, I wear a pair of Injinji socks to help with warmth and they also help with initial rubbing without socks, and I just like the feel better.

My Injinjis and Five Finger KOS

I am lucky enough to have great trails right out my back door, perfect for shorter recovery days and for my Five Fingers. It is mud season here in the Valley, so had great cushioned trails today!

My Back yard double track trails

Sneak Peak of the Grand Teton

Today's workout: 20 min barefoot at 10-12:00 pace or zone 1 heart rate. With the snow pack in the mountains, it will still be sometime before some great epic alpine runs can be had. But my feet will be ready! E
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