Barefoot running

Funny.

Thanks to Jon for the link.

Here's a demonstration of the 100-Up Technique that Chris McDougall writes about in his Times Mag piece.  It's supposed to help develop good running form, using a light heel-strike. Gonna give it a try today.

By now, barefoot running is old news.  Running a barefoot marathon is a little passe.  Which is why Bob Ewing is running a barefoot marathon...in a tuxedo.  

Check out the video below, most of which was shot at the NYCBR this year.  Yours truly is in there -- SHIRTLESS -- at 2:15, as well as the very last scene talking about why it's a good idea to wear a tuxedo whenever you're barefoot.

Bob is running for a good cause -- Swab a Check, Save a Life for the bone marrow registry to help lymphoma patients.  

• Check out Bob's site
• Donate to Bob's fundraiser
• Join the Bone Marrow Registry

It might be socially awkward for an adult to go barefoot in a variety of situations (especially if you're not a prince).  I get that.

With kids, however, it's easy.  And that's the most formative time in the development of the foot.  So we should let our kids go around barefoot whenever possible -- on the playground, at home, in the backyard.

This is a short clip of the young daughter of Jeanne, one of our core team at Barefoot Runners NYC.

Says Jeanne:

"There was another family there who was asking me a ton of questions about how I got my child to be so agile.  I told them I take her to the playground about 2x a day and let her go barefoot -- so she can grip better & have better balance.

She got completely soaked in the sprinkler, so I took her pants off -- the family promptly took off their 2 year old's shoes and his pants -- so their son could move freely too.  This was the first and only time someone has copied my barefoot parenting tactics -- immediately!

Go figure!  It is catching on.  Barefoot has gone viral."

Wow, what a weekend.  The 2nd Annual NYCBR was a huge success.

We had 405 people register for the run, up from 265 last year.  And we had more people come just for the clinics and talks on Saturday.  People traveled from 11 different countries around the world: US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Mexico, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Iceland, India, and Belgium.  It was the single largest collection of top barefoot runners in the world -- aside from recess at a Kenyan elementary school.

This photo didn't fit close to everyone. You can see the Statue of Liberty directly in back.

Jason Robillard, Maggie Durant, Lee Saxby, Dan Lieberman, Erwan Le Corre, John Durant, Chris McDougall, Barefoot Ken Bob, Barefoot Ted, Michael Sandler.  Not pictured: Daniel Howell, Mark Cucuzella, Esther Gokhale 

One of the biggest hits of the entire weekend was Barefoot Ted and the Luna Sandal's rickshaw.  Custom-built just for the event, it was designed to be put together and taken apart without tools -- a brilliant piece of engineering.

Why a rickshaw?  Glad you asked.  In a 1949 paper called "Survey in China and India of feet that have never worn shoes", it was found that barefoot "rickshaw coolies" had "more perfect" feet than others.   

"One hundred and eighteen of those interviewed were rickshaw coolies. Because these men spend very long hours each day on cobblestone or other hard roads pulling their passengers at a run it was of particular interest to survey them. If anything, their feet were more perfect than the others. All of them, however, gave a history of much pain and swelling of the foot and ankle during the first few days of work as a rickshaw puller. But after a rest of two days or a week's more work on their feet, the pain and swelling passed away and never returned again. There is no occupation more strenuous for the feet than trotting a rickshaw on hard pavement for many hours each day yet these men do it without pain or pathology."

We kicked off the run with a special announcement: two of the participants had planned their engagement around the weekend.  We put the two of them in the rickshaw, and Barefoot Ted pulled them through a gauntlet of runners to start the race.

The kid's run was awesome.  They put on a clinic for us.

The prior night was a blast too.  The venue overlooked the Brooklyn Bridge and Governors Island.  Merrell really went all out, decorating the place in orange and even making Merrell / NYCBR beer steins for all the participants.  All of our sponsors were fantastic: VIVOBAREFOOT ran the running clinics, Injinji sponsored the food during the run, Luna Sandals sponsored the rickshaw fun, Barefoot Wine and Smutty nose contributed wine and beer, JackRabbit Sports was hugely supportive, and Vita Coco had coconut water on hand all weekend.

And thank you to all of our incredible volunteers.  Our core team that helped with planning: Sanjay Amin, Melissa Bybee, Jeanne Davis, Lindsey Goble, KC Goyer, Chris Hawson, Rob Mathews, Lee Rawlings, and Trey Shelton.  And all the volunteers who helped us execute: Becca Alper, Lea Bentzen, Jeff Bierly, Richard Chin, Jessica Clarke, Brad Dodson, Clark Durant, Taylor Durant, Gareth Field, Lis Holmdahl, Mathias Holmdahl, Paul Koczera, Suzie Marlow, Cody Marsh, Abe Medenilla, Maggie Meehan, Chris Moffet, Jonathan Muhirad, Satchel Paige, Brianna Pollock, Jimmy Ross, Jenna Shannon, Amanda Shantz, Chris Stokes, Nick Sweeney, Tim Torba, Francis Werner, Jenna Wilson-Ashby, and Kris Wood.  And last but not least, my sister, Maggie Durant, who did far more work than anyone else, including me.

This event wouldn't have happened without you.

Dan Lieberman, as usual, gave the best talk.  He spoke about the cause of running injuries.  We got a preview of some cool results based on the Harvard Track Team -- expect them to be published soon.  Heel-strikers don't fare well.  Lieberman's hypothesis: your footwear matters less than your foot-strike.  In some cases, minimalist footwear might be even more damaging than running barefoot, because footwear still muffles the pain signal and proprioception that encourages good form (forefoot strike), but doesn't provide any cushioning.  Heel-striking in a pair of VFFs ain't a pretty site.

We also heard talks by the other kudus on various barefoot related subjects.  One of my favorite moments of the evening was honoring Barefoot Ken Bob and the other long-time barefoot runners who have been doing this long before it was cool.  Long before the studies, style section pieces, and the best-sellers, a few crazy people decided to take off their shoes and run barefoot.

Here's to the crazy ones.  We'll see you next year.

Photos by Keith Goldstein.

American Airlines has LOST Barefoot Ted's awesome, custom-built rickshaw.  They are racing to figure out where it went.  I smell foul play.  Perhaps a Luna Sandals competitor?  AMERICAN AIRLINES AND THE CASE OF THE MISSING RICKSHAW.  This is like Where in the World in Carmen San Diego.

Speaking of criminally awesome globe-trotting, tomorrow kicks off the 2nd Annual NYCBR and we have 11 countries represented: the US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Mexico, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Iceland, India, and Belgium. 

UPDATE: Carmen Sandiego has been apprehended and the Rickshaw has been returned to safety.  Nice job, gumshoe.

For the those who have not been following this adventure, a small group of us traveled to Wyoming to attempt a persistence hunt.  You can follow earlier reports here: I'm going on a persistence hunt, The Red Desert, Day One: Fall back foods, and Barefoot Ted is a firetalker.

And now for Day Two...

Morning

Dawn struck.  Our first alarm clock rose in the East.

In ones and twos, the eight of us were rustled awake -- first by the silent sun, then by human chatter, then by the smell of food cooking, then by needing to pee, then by the social pressure not to be seen as lazy.  A dozen signals, multiple sensory pathways, slightly asynchronous, starting gently and gradually intensifying, each day a bit different.  Sell an alarm clock that does half that and you can retire on it.

The modern alarm clock is the primitive technology.  A thuggish tool that clubs us awake, brute force cortisol, lacking elegance and intelligence -- the caveman stereotype embodied by modern man.

The Sun rises over the Red Desert

My "irrational" fear of snakes was perfectly rational sleeping on the ground in the Red Desert.  Luckily, no rattlesnakes had come in search of a warm-blooded radiator during the night.  Only one guy on our team was disappointed not to see any rattlesnakes: Dennis, the one guy with a .22 Ruger and more importantly, a sleeping perch safe from serpents: the back seat of his car.

This horny toad was the closest thing to a rattlesnake that we saw

Fire and fall back foods

I got up and looked at the ashes of last night's fire.  Jules, one of the Luna Sandals vegan space monkeys, had started the fire by rubbing together a few pieces of wood.  A simple device that transfers energy from the human body into rotational force into friction into heat into an ember into flame into more heat into yams and back into us.  A net gain chain reaction.

Vegan Prometheus, Jules

We didn't limit ourselves to yams.  Our camping fare included guacamole (fresh avocados, tomatoes, cilantro, and red onion), roast chicken, beer, peanut butter, bread, jelly, apples, peaches, canteloupe, walnuts, almonds, beef jerky, buffalo jerky, bourbon, coconut oil, garlic, salt, pepper, vinegar, cacao nibs, Ulrich's mother's homemade cookies, bottled water, canned beans, sardines, coffee, dried cranberries, corn tortillas, eggs, banana chips, and bananas.

Kill or no kill, even the three vegan hunters in our group didn't have any problem surviving.  (And at least two of the vegans were prepared to eat any antelope we successfully hunted.)

Espresso

Philip Stark, a Berkeley professor and ultra-marathoner, was attempting to make espresso on our little gas camping stove, all while excitedly making elaborate future plans to learn primitive skills: bow-making, flint knapping, persistence hunting.  The joke told itself: making espresso in the wild...what a bunch of city slickers!

But the joke only makes sense from a distance, within the old frame of viewing things.  The reality is that crafting a bow, or any other ancient skill, is not so different than learning any modern skill.  And in fact, Philip's elaborate espresso-making process was positively primitive, requiring far too much care, patience, and skill to ever find its way into a Starbucks.  He would have been a good bow-maker back in the day.

And this gets to the point of the trip: it was not to reject the good things of civilization in favor of a life in the wild.  No, the point of the trip was to go on an odyssey, to learn about what it means to be human, and eventually, to synthesize and integrate what is good about each era of our past into a better future.

I don't know how many times I'll have to say it -- it's not a paradox to embrace both the hunt and espresso, wild and civilized, instinct and culture, animal and human.  Choosing one or the other is a false choice.  Philip embraced both.  We all did.

The Professor enjoys a fermented beverage

Hunting

Okay, okay, on to the hunt.

Let me start by saying that the pronghorn antelope is the fastest land animal in the Western Hemisphere, second in the world only to the cheetah.  Except that pronghorn have far more endurance than cheetahs.  So in retrospect, perhaps we should have chosen a slower species.

We could find pronghorn -- finding them wasn't the problem.  And the first or second pursuit wasn't so hard either.  But once we pursued, the antelope got super skittish, and would run, oh, a mile away.  Sometimes just over a small rise.  Sometimes flanking us to get downwind.

Someone commented: "It's as if these antelope know exactly what to do."  We were amateur predators, they were professional prey.

It was harder to keep them in sight than you might think.  None of us were trackers, and we didn't know the natural movement patterns of antelope in that area.  Even with binoculars, it wasn't always easy to keep them in sight.

Even so, the terrain was about as favorable as you could hope for.  Fairly flat, open, and just filled with sage brush (as inhospitable habitats go, it smelled lovely).

Note: a lot of the Earth's surface is hard.  Remember that the next time you hear someone say that we didn't evolve to run barefoot on concrete.  The world is not one big golf course, one big grassy lawn.

As for footwear, everyone was wearing a pair of Luna Sandals on Day Two.  Two of us had worn VFFs on Day One, concerned about cacti on the top of our feet.  But the VFFs got hot and and sweaty and felt heavy, and if I stepped on a cactus, the needles would get stuck inside.  So I switched to my Lunas on Day Two.  They held up great.  I'm excited for some of the new models they have in development.

A herd of Lunas

We all wore a piece of blaze orange.  Partly so no one mistook us for antelope, partly so we could see each other from farther away.  There were times when each of us were spaced more than a quarter mile apart, so it really helped.  

This pack of predators hopes its prey will die of laughter

After a few hours of "hunting", we headed back to the cars -- long since out of sight over various ridges.

Our endurance running over, we held a series of footraces.  In my first heat against Barefoot Ted, I had a clear false start -- invalidating my victory.  In my second heat, I was accused of another false start, but I maintain that it was simply a good start -- and a clean victory.  You decide.

I'm offering Ted a re-match at the New York City Barefoot Run (shameless plug).

The MVP Award

Dennis Shaver was the MVP of our trip.  Master of logistics, he packed 7 people and tons of gear into a Land Rover, got shit done, and worked longer and harder than everyone else.  He was the same guy who arrived in Mexico before the first MovNat seminars, and with a buddy and a few machetes, hacked the campsite out of the jungle.  Dennis has paced Barefoot Ted at the Leadville 100 over the years.

Dennis was also interesting because, if he'll forgive me for using him as an example, his life encapsulates the transition that our entire civilization is going through.

• Like nearly all of us, his family has no memory of living in the wild (hunter-gatherer).
• He was raised on a dairy farm in Michigan by a stern German father, who gave him, through nature and nature, a good work ethic (herder-farmer).
• He put himself through college, and went into industrial manufacturing, where the farmer work ethic served him well (producer-consumer).
• As the routinized, physical Industrial Era is giving way to the agile Information Age, he has turned his manufacturing company into a lean, knowledge-based enterprise.

If you ever need a company to do product development and prototyping, he's your guy.

Dennis and me making guacamole

Steamboat Springs

On Saturday afternoon we drove down to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where we hit the hot springs for well-deserved soak.

Awesome interview with Harvard Professor Dan Lieberman in the New York Times -- and not just on barefoot running.  Dr. Lieberman will be speaking at the New York City Barefoot Run coming up on September 24-25th.

Q. Are there any practical benefits to your research?

A. There are. A majority of the undergraduates who register for my evolutionary anatomy and physiology class here at Harvard are pre-medical students. Learning this will help them become better doctors. Many of the conditions they’ll be treating are rooted in the mismatch between the world we live in today and the Paleolithic bodies we’ve inherited.

For example, impacted wisdom teeth and malocclusions are very recent problems. They arise because we now process our food so much that we chew with little force. These interactions affect how our faces grow, which causes previously unknown dental problems. Hunter-gatherers — who live in ways similar to our ancestors — don’t have impacted wisdom teeth or cavities. There are many other conditions rooted in the mismatch — fallen arches, osteoporosis, cancer, myopia, diabetes and back trouble. So understanding evolutionary biology will definitely help my students when they become orthopedists, orthodontists and craniofacial surgeons.

...

Q. Is your research part of a trend?

A. It’s part of this movement to try to listen to evolution in our bodies. We evolved to eat different diets, to run differently and live differently from the ways we do today. People are looking to evolution to find out how our bodies adapted and what might be healthier for us. That’s good.

You're damn right it's part of a trend.  Welcome to the epicenter of the health revolution.  The full interview is here, and you can get your tickets for NYCBR here.