My Old Cruel Shoes

Later that day, Carlos was overheard saying to a new customer, "Well, that's every shoe in the place. Unless, of course, you'd like to try the cruel shoes." –Steve Martin-

Once upon a time, when I was a kid, I used to ski every weekend all season long. I would ski the bumps and I hit them hard. I noticed some pain in my knees around age fourteen and by the time I turned fifteen, my knees were in horrible shape. They clicked and grinded and wiggled and hurt all while it felt like I had sand in the joints. Not the normal fifteen year old knee or the normal twenty something year old, or thirty something year old knee. Obviously, this condition came from my love of pounding moguls every Saturday with my friends.

Wait, looking back I now realize there was another event at this point in my life. At age thirteen, I started running track. I really didn’t want to run at all but my friends told me they need me on the track team so our moms could carpool when picking us up. So I ran track and I ran in my blue Adidas gym shoes.

Aren't they awesome.

I didn’t have any trouble running that first year even though I didn’t have the coolest shoes. So I begged and pleaded with my parents to buy me some new shoes so I don’t have to suffer the social embarrassment from my peers which at that time was worse than death. They caved and bought me the most popular brand at that time, Onizuka Tigers.

I had the yellow ones.

If you look at those primitive shoes, you can see they knew nothing about modern running. They were flat and had very little padding. Yet, my knees still felt fine but hey I was still young and had new knees.

Then came 8th grade track and I ran in what I thought were by far the best shoes ever. Nike Daybreaks.

I really loved these shoes.

Look at that big padded heal. How could it get any better? It’s a good thing running shoes just started padding their heals because it just so happens that particular year, (age 14), my knees started to hurt. By age fifteen, I had full blown old man knees and yet I still couldn’t buy beer. But, I couldn’t give up skiing, I loved it so much even though it was tearing my knees up.

So I continued to run track through high school and even went to the Junior Olympics for the 400 meters. I did all this with that painful grinding sand feeling in my knees. After high school I cut back on how much I skied, because of the cost and how much it was killing my knees. But to stay in shape, I kept running, not much maybe one or two miles a few days a week because it hurt too much to run more than that.

Around age thirty I decided it was time to get some decent running shoes and I forked out $115 and plunged into even more pain as I ran. Realizing Nike suckered me for the flare and flash of the new model, I bought another pair for $30. The pain reduced with these shoes but I still could not run more than three miles or thirty minutes due to all the damage I did to my knees skiing when I was younger.

Friends would ask if I could recommend good running shoes. I told them to buy what felt the most comfortable. If that was the top of the line or bottom of the line, go with the ones that felt the best. I made it clear not to fall for the salesmen’s push to go with the most state of the art model and i felt the most comfortable in the cheaper shoes.

Another decade passed and my skiing turned into one or two snowboard trips per year and my running remained at no more than three miles or thirty minutes with the last ten minutes of me hobbling back home from the pain in my knees. Walking stairs hurt, walking hurt, sitting for long period of time made them stiff and overall my running days were coming to an end from all those early years of skiing damage.

One afternoon while I took my 10 year old son for a run, I tried the best I could not to look crippled when I ran. He asked me why I ran so funny and I told him I had old man knees. While we ran around the track, I saw these two guys running barefoot in the grass on the outside of the track. These guys looked like real runners and not someone who was just trying to be “Green” while they ran. I couldn’t understand how they could do something that went against all we knew about running and exercise but it appeared they knew what they were doing.

With my curiosity up, I did a few Google searches and stumbled upon Barefoot Ken Bob. I drank in every word he wrote about why we should run barefoot. I couldn’t wait to try it, in fact that very day I ran my first barefoot mile in the grass. What I absolutely could not grasp was why my knees didn’t hurt. I knew for sure that the damage from skiing would not allow me to run without shoes but here I was running with no pain.

Hundreds of barefoot pain free miles later, I’m walking up stairs with no pain, sitting with no stiffness and apologizing to my skis for blaming them all these years for hurting my knees when it was the shoes. Those evil devil cruel shoes.

Running with the Earth

Growing up in Colorado, I skied every weekend up to the last day of the season. By age twelve, I had mastered the bumps and had no difficulty maneuvering down any black diamond slope which later became double black diamonds so you could doubly impress your friends as you drop the names of the slopes you mastered that day.

It wasn’t all that difficult. I learned to pick the lines between the moguls and let the bumps do most if the work. I knew this bump would throw me around this way into that bump which in turn would throw me that way… and so on. All I had to do was keep control of my skis.

As I started barefoot running this same concept came back to me. I realized on certain surfaces, (down hill on concrete) I ran with a strange form that looked like my feet hurt. My vanity didn’t want people to see me and think of course his feet hurt, he’s not wearing shoes.

So, going down hill, I shortened my stride and let the slope determine how fast I went. All I need to do is keep control of my balance. I learned to watch for any variations in the ground that might help me propel myself forward. Small bumps I use as stairs when going up hills, harder surfaces on flat ground, using downhill momentum to push me back up the hill, any small bulge, crack, or indentation I use to my advantage.

As this technique became common to all my runs, I thought I had stumbled on a new style of running. Then I came to the part in the book BORN TO RUN by Christopher McDougall, where Caballo Blanco explains how the Tarahumara taught him not to run on the earth but to run with the earth. How he uses rocks and the ground to help him run through the hell-like terrain of Copper Canyon. Well so much for my big discovery. But, I do enjoy using the ground to my advantage.

I would love to hear from other runners, (shod or barefoot) who use this technique and any tips they could share.

Why I Run Barefoot

At first, when people asked me why I ran barefoot, I couldn’t keep my answer to less than 2 hours. I went on about how we are designed to run, muscles, joint pain and on and on and on. It would usually end with someone yelling out, “no more beer for this guy.”

So I started this blog and told people, “If you really want to know, check out my blog. You can read all you want or just nod your head politely like you intend to read it but really won’t.” Even then I had a hard time condensing my answer to under fifteen minutes.

Finally, I have it down to one short sentence.

“Why do you run barefoot?”

“It eliminated my knee pain.”

That’s it. If they have follow up questions, I point them to my blog. If they continue to be interested, I usually fall into my two hour monologue that includes sections of interpretive dance and a drum circle.

The legendary Groin Pull - No Hash Run for Me

Yesterday, I did an easy three miles and decided to finish it off with a set of wind sprints. Even though I always do a very thorough stretching routine, I pulled a groin muscle and had to limp home. Normally, I would just deal with it and let it heal but I had planned on running my first Hash Run tonight. I am so bummed. Now I have to go to back to school night because apparently that is what responsible parents are supposed to do.

My Feet are Connected to my Ears

I have never been a big subscriber to reflexology, but I did have an experience that makes it hard for me to ignore that there might be some legitimacy to this practice.

Many years ago, I had this problem with my right thumb. It just started getting real stiff and stayed in a permanent hitch hiker position. Not only did it hurt if I tried to bend it, it just wouldn’t bend. I had some cortisone shots that worked for a few weeks but the stiffness always came back and the doctor said too many cortisone shots would start to do some damage to the joint.

With no other choice, I went to see an acupuncturist. To eliminate any thoughts you have of a placebo effect, I went to this guy’s office fully convinced it wouldn’t work and I was wasting my time.

He started by, as you already guessed, placing a whole bunch of needles in my hand. It felt like someone placed a whole bunch of needles in my hand. He had me sit there for twenty minutes with some meditation music. If you know me, you would know that at this point, I’m in opposite world. When he took the needles out, he asked, “How does that feel?” I told him, “No change.”

The “doctor” decided to try another approach. He explained that just like your feet, your ears have nerves that connect to the rest of your body. After pulling out what looked like a fat ball point pen connected to a battery pack, he said we needed to shock the Hand Area of my ear. At this point I realized that I’m getting the level of medical treatment one would usually expect to get at Taco Bell.

He pressed this device into the top part of my ear and turned it on. Instantly, the stiffness in my thumb melted away. I looked like a total idiot, holding my hand up and moving my thumb around saying, “look I can move my thumb around.”

The stiffness never came back so I guess you could say the reflexology approach worked.

As I run barefoot and stimulate all those nerves in the bottom of my feet, I have noticed other areas of my body feeling the effect. At night when the muscle protein synthesis activates and the nerves in my feet and legs start firing off, I can feel the effects in my shoulders, neck, back, and arms. Perhaps it’s all my imagination but I’m going with the reflexology explanation for now.

Weeks Six, Seven Eight…

In terms of sore muscles, blisters and overall adjustments, I seem to have reached a plateau. I get a bit sore and stiff when I push it to the next level but nothing new to report. So I’m going to cut back on the weekly reports and post other items of interest.