Running Shoe Dilemma

Great debate going on. Love it. I can only give my experience. I've gone through too many running injuries to count...ITBS, knee pain, ankle pain, shin splints, groin injuries, Achilles injuries, etc. These all happened in Brooks Beast because that's what the guy at the running store told me I needed. I have feet as flat as pancakes and a severe over-pronator. I also have bunions on both feet. It wasn't until I went barefoot and minimal that all my injuries went away. But I'm not going to say that it's the shoe (or lack of shoes) that's the cause or the solution to problems. I think it mostly boils down to running form. My form sucked when I wore shoes. I was a heavy heel striker, but you can't do that barefoot. Going barefoot forced me to run with good running form. I believe most people can run injury free in shoes if they can run with proper form. But, I need the minimal approach to keep me running with proper form. Once I lace up a pair of shoes, I slowly revert back to heel striking...especially if I have thick heel support that force it. This is also one of the reasons why some of the elites can run with shoes. Most of them grew up in places where they did all their running barefoot. This conditioned them to run with proper form, which carried over into their shoe wearing days. Which, I also believe that they wear shoes now because they're being sponsored by shoe companies and they won't make any money barefoot :)

I'm only running about 50-60 miles a week right now with 80% VFF or barefoot. The other 20% is on technical trails with trail shoes because the rocks and tree roots can still cause pain. But I LOVE running barefoot on asphalt and cement...hard surfaces are great for barefeet.

Jon

Thanks for posting that video. It was fun to watch.

You can imagine how the abstract thinking skills required for persistence hunting probably developed as our brains began to grow larger. The development of causation based-thinking, logic, reasoning skills, one can see how they might have been spurred on by running based hunting.

The BBC can put together a damn good documentary. Do you know what special that was from?

Sam in Denver wrote:

The BBC can put together a damn good documentary. Do you know what special that was from?

Very true.

I don't know what show it is from. If anyone does, please enlighten us :)

The link was posted by a regular in the barefoot runners sub forum at runnersworld.com on the 26th.

via

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

"The persistence hunt is still practised by hunter-gatherers in the central Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa, and David Attenborough's documentary The Life of Mammals (program 10, "Food For Thought") showed a bushman hunting a kudu antelope until it collapsed [2]. Also the Tarahumara natives of northwestern Mexico in the Copper Canyon area may have practiced persistence hunting."

Thank you, Bonehead.

UrbanSage wrote:

I don't know what show it is from. If anyone does, please enlighten us

Looks like this one?

My pleasure...

There is strong evidence most of human locomotion adaptations came from endurance running.

A great review in nature in 2004.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v432/n7015/full/nature03052.html

There's quite a bit more recent work, as well as older. This, however, provides a good summary, detailing the adaptations of walking, endurance running and dual use.

A lot of it has to do with energy returns (e.g. achilles) and thermoregulation. Quite a bit easier to get the meat/fat required to power a brain if you can efficiently chase a gazelle for 5 or six hours at a reasonable pace, at which point said gazelle falls over from heat exhaustion.

This is a bit unrelated, but I'm selling new Victory's and Matumbo's on ebay for cheap. The vics are just under $80 and the Matumbo's are a bid. 2 pairs of each.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Nike-Matumbo-Track-Spike_W0QQitemZ290334737015QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Men_s_Shoes?hash=item43994c8277&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Nike-Zoom-Victory-Track-Spike_W0QQitemZ290334540103QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Men_s_Shoes?hash=item4399498147&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

Actually, that's completely unrelated :)

Jacobissellingvics wrote:

This is a bit unrelated, but I'm selling new Victory's and Matumbo's on ebay for cheap. The vics are just under $80 and the Matumbo's are a bid. 2 pairs of each.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Nike-Matumbo-Track-Spike_W0QQitemZ290334737015QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Men_s_Shoes?hash=item43994c8277&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Nike-Zoom-Victory-Track-Spike_W0QQitemZ290334540103QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Men_s_Shoes?hash=item4399498147&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14