1st Hash Run

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After months of trying, I finally was able to attend my first Hash Run.

I tried back in August but that’s when I first tore a muscle in my leg. In September I re-injured it again right before a hash and in October I was in Mexico. Even though I’m still nursing the same muscle tear, I decided to give it try.

The group met in the parking lot of a city park. Judging by the number of international Hash Run shirts, it appeared these people were not just casual hashers or maybe Hashing is not that casual. We did a chalk talk to go over the symbols to mark the course, I was introduced as a virgin along with a few other people and off we went.

Right from the start we came to a check which meant the course could go in any direction from there. A few people split off in the different ways until one found the route and yelled, “On on.” Over the next two hours we ran through residential neighborhoods, fields, paths, parking lots, and crossed a very cold river. This was easily the most fun I’ve had running in decades. We even had a beer stop half way through the run. The small piles of flour that marked the route led us behind a grocery store where an ice chest filled with beer waited for us. After a quick drink, it was back to the run.

Several people brought their dogs on the run. Apparently, these dogs had acquired a taste for beer as they felt the beer stop was just as much for them as it was for the humans.

When we finally arrived at the end of the run, which was someone’s garage, I realized I had no idea where I was. My car was parked back at some park I had never been to before and I spent two hours weaving around a part of town I had never seen. Lucky for me the first item of business was to shuttle everyone back to the park so they could get their cars.

Once everyone was back at the house, I got to take part in my first circle. It started off with the Hares, (the ones who laid down the route), doing a down down while the group sang an R rated song. A down down is where you have to drink all the beer in your cup and invert the cup over your head when you are finished which gives you incentive to finish every drop. Next, the virgins, including me, had to enter the circle and do a down down for being virgins. Once we inverted our cups, the Hash Master said, “Congratulations, you are no longer virgins.”

The circle went on for another hour giving out down downs for all kinds of reasons and singing many more songs you don’t want to repeat in front of the kids. Some people had been caught running road races, some sent the Hash Master a stupid email. The people who came in first and the people who came in last were punished with beer. The people who had skipped a race had to do a down down as did the guy who celebrated 25 years of hashing. I had to do another down down with all the other men who needed Rogaine. During the down down for people with new shoes, I was called to the circle for wearing my Five Fingers because they were strange and yes I had to drink a beer from my shoe.

The evening ended with a chili dinner and some socializing. It was such a great time, I know I will be hashing for the foreseeable future maybe even starting my own collection of international Hash Run shirts.

Relaxing on the Beach

I never thought anything could be more relaxing than lying on the beach doing absolutely nothing. It appears I was wrong or at least as far as my well being is concerned.

While spending a week on the beach in Mexico (it was rough), I was feeling lethargic and not that well rested. It didn’t make sense, I was doing the ultimate relaxation activity. After three days of this, I decided to go on a nice long barefoot run on the beach. After my first quarter mile, it was as if my body was saying, “Yes, that’s what I’ve been wanting.” I felt more energetic and relaxed all at the same time. The more I ran, the more my body relaxed deep down and felt better overall. I don’t know if it was due to my focus on relaxing while I run or that my muscles needed the blood flow. Either way, running felt better and more relaxing than the lounge chair on the beach.

Another strange occurrence while I ran was breathing too much air. At home, I run between the altitudes of 5,770 and 6,100 feet above sea level. In this thin air, I breathe with a certain cadence of two quick breaths in, per stride, and one out. This helps me set a pace and lets me know how hard I am running. At sea level I couldn’t begin to breath heavy enough to start my two quick in and one out rhythm. I tried to use slow long breathes and became light headed from too much oxygen. I actually had to pay attention to not breathe too much while running. How weird is that?

Race Report – Red Rocks Scramble

I ran in the Red Rocks Scramble a part trail, part road race. There was a good group of barefoot runners, from Boulder, running the 5K.

The other barefoot runners from Boulder at the starting line.

I was the only bf runner entered the 5mile race. Since I was not sure what I was going to encounter on the trail sections of the course, I wore my VFF’s. My goal was to finish the race with an 8:30 mile average.

It has been 27 years since I last ran in a race, but as I stood in the crowd at the starting line it felt like business as usual. The excitement of the start caused me to come out way too fast. By the half mile mark, I was sucking wind hard. I tried to slow down but the trail had so many little hill and

quick turns, it was difficult to fall into my relaxed normal pace. By the time the race moved onto the road, I was ready to loose my breakfast but lucky for me I didn’t eat breakfast this day.

On the smooth asphalt encased by the emblazoned trees at the peak of their multiple fall colors, it was all too easy now to relax and run at my pace. I moved into what I had practiced all summer letting my feet feel the ground and tell how to move.

Hill climbs; I did my round bicycle steps and passed a few runners with ease. The down hill side; I let the road push me as fast as it wanted. Most of the runners around me thought I was racing them and pushed themselves to keep up with me.

On the flats, I stayed relaxed, caught my breath and reserved energy and strength. At the 5K turnaround point about thirty of the fifty people in front of me turned back. For a brief moment, I could see the front runners and entertained thoughts about going for it. But my age and wisdom kicked in and reminded me to run at the pace I trained at or else I will not make my 8:30 mile goal. So I pushed the competitive me aside and let runners pass me as I stayed at my pace.

A few hundred yards past the 2 mile marker, I saw the front runners coming back towards me. This meant they were close to a mile ahead of me and now I’m really glad I didn’t try to run their race because I wouldn’t make it to three miles at their speed. I did count the runners that passed me until I reached the turnaround. There were 25 runners in front of me, not bad for someone who thought about never running again just four months ago.

Two runners ran with me for the next half mile. We were in sync with our strides which kept us linked together. I was on cruise control and didn’t want to push any harder but I didn’t want to stay step for step with them. I wished there were more bumps and cracks in the ground that I could use to my advantage but the asphalt was fairly new.Without any increase in effort, I did something they could not do because they wore running shoes. With each step, I pressed my big toe into the ground which gave a minor extension on my stride similar to the clap skates speed skaters use. It worked wonderfully, I slowly pulled away from these runners and didn’t see them for the rest of the race.

I'm closing in on the 4 mile mark.

Just past the four mile marker, the barefoot runners, who ran the 5K, were on the side of the road and cheered me on. With less than a mile left, I thought, “what the heck” let’s go for it. I started moving up, passing runners who were breathing hard and struggling. Once I entered the woods and back on the winding trail, I was on the heels of a man with short gray hair and a red shirt. I thought to myself, he’s me in ten years. There was no doubt he knew I wanted to pass him and he wanted to keep me behind him. The trail in the woods was too narrow and winding for me to make a move. I stayed right on his heels waiting until after we crossed the bridge and were in the open ground.

Not me, but this is the turn onto the bridge.

As we came out of the trees to the sharp turn onto the bridge, I tweaked the groin pull I had been battling for the last month. It made me stutter for one step but did not slow me down. Across the bridge, we were in the open and I was ready to make my move. As I pushed myself to about three quarters of my full speed, the gray haired man in the red shirt took off like a rocket and left me in the dust.

I did keep this fast pace for the last half mile and finished feeling strong as if I could have run several more miles. I stopped so the race officials could take the tag off my number. When I walked away, I realized that groin pull tweak I did on the bridge was worse than I thought. I could barely move my right leg. Checking the board, I finished with a time of 38:23, a 7:31 mile pace.

Latter, when I saw the bulge above my leg, I realized it wasn’t a groin pull but a hernia. It looks like my future races are on hold until I get this fixed.

UPDATE: What I thought was a hernia turned out to be just a really bad groin pull. In just two weeks I'm already back to running 4-6 miles daily.

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.