@chadnorthrup

Fresh Kicks

Friends and loyal readers (all 3 of you out there), meet my new shoes: the Nike Free Sparq 09. And for all you jokers out there- no, they were not free. More like $85 at my local Sports Authority ($70 once I presented my $15-off coupon).

Why did I buy these shoes? Well, I'm a little more than halfway into Christopher McDougall's Born to Run, and the case he makes about the evils of traditional running shoes was something I couldn't ignore. Here are a couple quotes from the book:

Runners wearing top-of-the-line shoes are 123 percent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap shoes, according to a study led by Bernard Marti, M.D., a preventative-medicine specialist at Switzerland's University of Bern.

In the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, Dr. [Barry] Bates and his colleagues reported that as shoes wore down and their cushioning thinned, runners gained more foot control... The puzzling conclusion: the more cushioned the shoe, the less protection it provides.

In a startling admission in 2008, Runner's World confessed that for years it had accidentally misled its readers by recommending corrective shoes for runners with plantar fasciitis: "But recent research has shown stability shoes are unlikely to relieve plantar fasciitis and may even exacerbate the symptoms" (italics mine).

The bottom line according to the book: running shoes are the devil because they alter the natural motion of your feet. Your feet do their best work when they can feel what's under them, and the best way to tell them what's beneath is to run barefoot. The studies cited in the book make a compelling case that the rise of running injuries over the past couple of decades can be linked to more expensive/supportive/corrective footwear.

I've never had a major running injury, but as I get older I do find that I have occasional knee pain and back stiffness. My dad had to cut his running career short due to chronic knee pain, so I'm open to trying new things that might allow me to extend my own career into my 40's & 50's. When I saw that Nike makes a shoe that is supposed to simulate barefoot running (while protecting my feet from jagged bits of rock and glass on the roadway), I figured what the heck... let's try it!

On Sunday I ran a 5-miler with these shoes and I have to say it felt great. At first I felt like I was running on top of frying pans because the shoes felt wider to me, but it it didn't take long to get used to it. No knee stiffness during the run, and less of the standard soreness when I got out of bed this morning. The only thing I noticed was some tightness in my left achilles tendon, but it wasn't painful and I attributed it to getting accustomed to running on less padding.

It's tough to draw any broad conclusions after 1 run. I plan to keep running in these shoes on the treadmill and the road, and I'll update my progress here. Let me know if anyone else out there is trying similar footwear (or no footwear at all!)