Wow, what a week. After my last post describing my 20 miles through some nasty weather, which I really enjoy running through, things took a turn for the worst later that day. Ironically, I described how I noticed so many downed and broken trees from the storm two weeks prior. Well, the storm the day of that posting increased in intensity and wound up doing probably 5 times the damage to the remaining trees. Saturday night looked like a war zone with trees down blocking every other street.

Then to top things off, Saturday night my neighborhood loses power and my family and I live like refugees until Monday night.

And those arboretums of mine which I wrote about before, well, they’re not for the better. One of them is on a 60 degree angle, but they’re all still standing.

One way to spend your day when you have no power is to go shopping. I dropped 125$ on a pair of Vibrams KSO Trek on Sunday. Yeah, I read Born to Run, and I’ve been meaning to post a review of it for a while. But, the book is not the reason I bought the Vibrams. I don’t consider myself so impressionable and I have a lot of problems with the book in how it promotes barefoot running as a cure-all. Especially in the beginning of the book in the way the author dismisses orthotics as being a viable solution to his injury problems without giving any logical reason why. As a reminder, I wear orthotics, and have written about them (My Orthotics), and I can honestly say I havent had any major injury since. (Some of it also comes from experience, and some of it from luck, but the point is they work!)

Sporthotics

Vibram Men's FiveFingers KSO Trek

Nonetheless, I thought it was a great book however, and if you’re reading my blog, but you havent read Born to Run, then you’re reading the wrong stuff. The book is very inspirational and most runners will identify with it.

Oh by the way, with all the research of barefoot running that came out recently, I planned to write my thoughts on it. But Science of Sport did it and I could never have written such quality, nor would I have had anything new to add. You should give that a read as well if you have any interest in this subject. It’s quite objective, and they argue both sides, but I still think people will take away from it what they want. I suggest you dig and go through their entire Series on Running shoes, as well as the last few posts in March titled “Barefoot running and shoes Q&A” . There’s no direct link to the full series, but if you scroll along the right side of the page they currently list links to each part.

But, I’ll just sum up my thoughts briefly. I think there’s a place for barefoot running in my training. I’ve always enjoyed it on the beach, or grass, or in socks on the treadmill. I feel it’s as if it’s almost like a foot massage to some degree with the way my foot stretches as I land and push off. I also like the midfoot strike and its something that works for me. In fact, my orthotics encourage a midfoot strike. Maybe someone should let Christopher McDougall know that. And I don’t think heel striking will necessarily doom every runner for injuries.

So I do it as a supplement on an occasional easy day. I do like the fact that there is something natural about it and I think there are marginal benefits to keeping my feet healthy. But, I’m not about to go around telling everyone they should be doing it too.

Anyway, I got the Vibrams because I was hoping to avoid the occasional blister. Well I’ve used them once so far on the treadmill and I have a new blister.

There’s also another blog I follow in which I saw the author blog about her experiences with her Vibrams. From what I can tell, and I hope I’m not misrepresenting the facts, she gave this a try to alleviate her knee problems only to wind up with a different injury on her foot/ankle that has her now sidelined for two weeks on doctor’s orders. Given the nature of the injury, I would bet its a result of the Vibrams, and being she was already in marathon shape, I wouldnt say she overdid things either in my opinion. I would be curious to know how her knee is though. Did she trade one injury for another?

Last thing on this.. Often I’ve looked at pictures of myself, and others, while running to see who heel strikes and who lands on their midfoot. This video below is pretty interesting in that it shows a picture can be very deceiving. While watching, it looks as if the runner is going to heel strike, and then the foot reaches down to land forefoot at the last minute. Goes to show you may not always be able to tell if you’re heel striking or midfoot striking based on a still photograph