In two years I'll run a marathon. Barefoot.
By Nisto
Aftenposten is the largest (or second largest) newspaper in Norway. They had an article about BF and minimalistic running a couple of weeks ago -- but it was more "wow, some people mean this is good, strange" than anything else. So I decided to write a reply, a comment from someone who really knows what BFR is all about (and learning more and more every day...)
And what do you know, they put in on their frontpage. Here is the article. (Click.)
Google translated (and BTW, the part about some barefooters thinking it can cure cancer: I exaggerated to make more people think that BFR is also for them, also for so called "normal people."
In two years I'll run a marathon. Barefoot.
It began quite by chance.
Opinions
Jostein Sande Nilsen
Published: May 23. 2012 (16:00) Updated: May 23. 2012 (17:47)
A year ago I sat in a park and saw the dark red blood flow out from the left storetåa and down on the ground. Toe was broken, I knew it, I'd melt it in a mess, really melt it so it was a loud bang, and already saw a little more crooked and swollen, did not it? I took off my t-shirt and tried to wash the toe, but it was full of blood mixed soil and it looked bad to worse when I lubricated it outward. A couple of elderly ladies who came by and wrinkled brows and lent me his hand disinfectant bottle. It does not look good, they said, shaking his head, have you lost your shoes?
No, I said, I run barefoot. Yes, in the woods here. No, you do not call for any. It goes well. It goes well.
You can only keep the bottle, they said in the end and went on. Dismay.
Just wait, I thought, just wait. In two years I'll run a marathon. Barefoot.
Again and again
Madness? Despite? A moment of pride not to protect their own ego? A year later I run 10-20-30 miles per week and have signed up for half marathon this fall. All barefoot. I have stepped on countless things and living beings, thousands of small stones, hundreds of ants and beetles and snails. Every time I come back from a run, I have to scrape away the sticky remains of living things, or maybe it's chewing gum, or dog poop, or blood from a scratched big toe, it's not always easy to see. And every time my feet are covered with a thick layer of general dirt, and every time it turns out that dirt on the soles of the feet is impossible to be completely rid of.
Every time I run, I get a comment or five, and even more wide-open eyes. And yet I do it again and again, each time allowing the running shoes at home.
So why?
It began quite by chance. I read somewhere that running shoes are not good and that time should run barefoot. Well, I thought, like. None of my barefoot experiences had noticeable taste ever, I went with slippers inside and had trouble walking a kilometer barefoot through the woods to get to the beach when I was a child. It hurt and it was disgusting. And when I trained, it was always in the greatest basketball shoes that were to be found - what one would otherwise protect against stepping over?
Moreover, they were cool.
Barefoot had never been an option. I knew that Abebe Bikila ran barefoot and won the marathon at the 1960 Olympics, but it had obviously not been good enough for him either, he ran with shoes in the 1964 Olympics, so why would I ever consider it? Throwing my Air Max and Air Jordan and trust that your feet could itself? Pah!
And yet was not thought out this time. What if there was at least a little bit right? How would it be true? So I started looking for information. To learn more, just.
A new thing
And so I was sold. You know how it is, you discover a new thing, you find a new insight that few others have found, and you think it sounds more and more sense the more you read about it. But the more confident you become, the more incomprehensible it is that others do not accept your arguments, then you are looking for like-minded arguments, and you become even more convinced that you are right, and it all becomes a circle.
Some barefoot runners are convinced that skoselskaper are evil and that the trainers are really just a big conspiracy. Some refuse to use the word shoes, but instead write s ** or fotkister. Others believe that they are cured of barefoot running, they have certainly not been sick since they began two years ago. Sometimes it degenerates to the strangest New Age claptrap you can imagine, the free radicals that cure cancer through the soles of your feet and so on.
When you find a new thing, you often go too far because you do not know when to stop. On the other hand, had I not been saved, had I never bothered to spend so many forces and so long to go from skoløping to barefoot running.
And I had not spent so many forces and so much time, I had not discovered that behind the highest calling of the strangest things, behind the ones that get the most attention in a tabloid world, there are many battalions of more normal people who run barefoot simply because they like it, and serious research that shows that in many ways is better without shoes. And had I not discovered it, I eventually tired of the whole barefoot thing and blown it as a mayfly that still did not have anything to offer.
Walked barefoot more and more
When I broke my toe, I had held on for a few months already. In a few weeks I ran two hundred yards barefoot every morning before the children woke up. I walked barefoot more and more, I tried two to three kilometers barefoot running, slowly, gently, so the transition should not be too large.But it took the bravery me and I ran some forest trails where roots were greater than hockey sticks, and I ran too fast, so his wife would look at the GPS later and be impressed, and I did not see clearly, and SMELL, it was the toe.
But I knew it. I knew what had happened, I realized what I had done wrong, and I cursed myself that it would not happen again. Just wait, I'll run a marathon in two years.
So why?
First and foremost, because it feels right. Before my horse, especially when I had on Basketball. Now I'm tripping, light, and I will not say elegant, but much less inelegant, at least. I know the ground, swings over unclean according to how it felt on the soles, am delighted to step on solar paths or soft soil. Before my head went up and down, the whole body bounced like a basketball when I was running, now I like a bit more professional runner, head and upper body is kept much more quiet and it all flows much better.
The arguments - and the feeling
There are more scientific arguments, the man has had shoes in only about 50 000 years, so all the running before then, much later, have been barefoot. Evolution has adapted to our feet and legs to the barefoot movement - and certainly not to a life in the vast, shock absorbing trainers who came just a few decades ago. Shoe prevents your foot move naturally.Running barefoot, or in the same way as the barefoot runners, is a more energy-efficient way to run on and use your leg muscles and tendons in a more efficient manner. And: the ability to run long thought to be something people are already developed when they fell from the trees and onto the savannah. To walk on two legs making you slower to ask, but better to run far, and it was probably the first people to hunt prey by running after the animals to the collapse of overheating. The people, however, avoided overheating by sweating.
The more scientific arguments are good to have discussions, and meet the more rational part of me, but it would not have felt right to run barefoot, I had given me long ago. And it's surprising how bad conditions can be learned to run barefoot in.
When it's cold, I take with me more clothes on the rest of the body - the record so far is seven miles in drizzle and five degrees, a fantastic trip.(Some of the trick is to not stop.) It would have been impossible last year.
Running with joy
When it is hot, the air feet me. If I find a stream on the way, I jump up and cools me and some toys and runs on. The few times I walk in the shoes now, they will be felt tight and heavy, but first and foremost, damp and too warm. And back to squirt streams or ponds can I just forget.
My feet are stronger. My toes are no longer as shoe-shaped, but has spread more like a fan. The skin under the soles of your feet are rough, but not stiff, and I still feel pebbles on the path, but it does no longer nearly as bad.
I still can not run as fast as bare as I have done with shoes, or so far. But I'm approaching steadily. And sometimes, in summer, black asphalt, or in freezing temperatures or too pointy rocks, I'm not going out shoes. But even when I put on my shoes now, I run differently than before, better, more efficiently. More like a child barefoot across a summer meadow.
I run with much more pleasure. And it is perhaps the most important.
