About a month a go Dr. Michael Wilkinson, senior lecturer in sport and exercise sciences at Northumbria uni ran a workshop on Barefoot running at the university. Barefoot running has seen a huge rise in popularity recently with the success of books like ‘Born to Run’ so not surprisingly the workshop filled up incredibly quickly, so quickly in fact I didn’t manage to secure a place.
Following on from the workshop, Michael set up a facebook group and has an open invitation to join him and other barefoot runners running around the town moor on Thursday evening’s. The group has been attracting 4 or 5 runners a week, so I thought it was about time I went along to see what it was all about.
Regular readers of this blog will know I’ve done a bit of running in Vibram Five Fingers which are a minimalist shoe and have ran truly barefoot on the roads a couple of times, but I’ve never ran with other barefoot runners.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I got there, or what sort of reaction the group would get from other runners. When you run in minimalist shoes you kind of expect to get strange looks, when you run completely barefoot you can expect even stranger looks, but what sort of reaction would we get when there were a group of us all with no shoes? To be honest most people just seemed to ignore the lack of footware. a couple of people looked away and one guy on a bike warned us to watch out for the cow dung on the track.
Most the the townmoor has good tracks, but there are a couple of sections that are a bit rougher and a couple that are just gravel which is one of the hardest surfaces to run on barefoot. Running on the grass and some of the smooth paths through the park was pretty much like any other social or cub run, chatting about previous runs or future plans, as the track became more broken and running became more difficult the experience started to change a strange sort of machismo began to kick in, I found myself running over terrain much tougher than that I would normally have dared run on had I been onmy own. It was as if the whole group collectively just decided to ignore any signs pain from the roughness of the broken track.
I noticed more than before that the feeling of running on smooth surfaces like soft grass or finely finished tarmac paths was quite cool and soothing where as running on sharp spikey broken tarmac tracks felt like tiny little intense pin pricks of heat.
Not yet being used to running on these kind of surfaces I found that by stride and style changed switching from one surface to another where as I noticed Sumanth who’s obviously been doing this for longer and who’s feet are obviously much tougher than mine barely batted an eyelid as we switched from surface to surface.
We ran a similar loop to Park run in glorious sunshine, something just short of 5k, then after posing for a quick group photo, I put my Five Fingers back on and decided that as it was such a lovely night I may as just keep on going and jog home instead of taking the train as planned. This had the added bonus of taking my miles logged on Nike+ to just over 3000, although as I had brought any water not having planned to run home, I did have to make a quick detour to Asda on the way back to collect a few essentials like, water, haribo and coke (which i had to shake up to get it to go flat). The haribo were 3 for a quid, and if I thought the looks I got running in minimalist shoes were bad, the looks I got standing outside of Asda stuffing 3 bags of haribo and a bottles of coke down my throat before continuing were in another league.
Subscribe to Davidcoxon.com/run
http://www.ultra-runner.com/
Great blog David. I may have looked at ease on the rough surface but believe me, I was in just as much pain as you. I guess my withdrawal reflex doesn’t work as well!
An very nice blog Dave. It was a pleasure meeting and running with you and the others last night. I find your comment about machismo kicking in simultaneously funny but also concerning. I would like to hope that people that join us for our Thursday evening Park runs don’t feel pressured to run on terrain they don’t feel able run on comfortably. Everyone that has joined us so far is somewhere near start of the barefoot running learning curve and knowing when to stop in response to discomfort is a very important part of learning. As I showed last week when I bugged out only half way down the gravel path in the park, even experienced barefoot runners are always still learning to master the really rough stuff and there’s no shame in acknowledging you’re technique is not quite up to the task. The mantra that has stood me in good stead for the last six years is if I can’t run on the surface without pain, I don’t run on it. Instead I try simply standing on it then finding a way to walk on it without pain and keep experimenting with technique until I can run on it without pain. I just want those who might wish to join us for future runs to know that there is absolutely no pressure to do anything they are not ready for. Hope to see you again soon for another one!
Thanks Sumanth.
Mick, I must apologize if I gave the wrong impression. The group was a very friendly and welcoming group and there was not the slightest sense of competition in the way that some running clubs can tend to be.
Perhaps machismo, is the wrong word and I can reassure you that neither I nor any of the other runners to the best of my knowledge, felt no pressured to do anything that we did not want or feel comfortable doing.
What i was perhaps trying to get at was that running with other barefoot runners gave me a little more confidence, enabling be to persevere with over some of the rougher ground.
Pain is a very relative word and again probably not quite the right word, but I’m struggling to find a more appropriate one. Its possibly more a feeling of sharpness to me it felt a little like a sensation of heat? I should also add that very little of the course involved running over this rougher track and there was a grassy path to the side of the track so I could quite easily have avoided this if i’d wanted to and still stayed with the group.
I very much enjoyed the evening and look forward to running with you all again in the near future.
i think next time i come i’ll have to get my shoes off…with them on i felt over dressed! great to meet you all, even being the odd one out it was still good fun, i’ll come along agen after keilder m.
~ james
…i wanted to add, David have you ever tried medjool dates or even just raisins as a fuel source. not only are they dense cals but also nutritious!
Hi James, no I haven’t tried medjool dates, but I do occasionally take mixed nuts and raisins on long runs. Funny you should ask that, I was considering writing a post of nutrition and ultra running. During the Lakeland 50, I found that my energy levels were dropping as I got towards the end of some of the longer sections, then picking up again after I’d stocked up on fuel at the checkpoint.
Races like the Lakeland 50 have fantastic feed stations and I can get pretty much everything I need on route, but others like the Hardmoors 60, don’t provide any food at all, relying instead on runners taking care of their own nutritional needs in drop bags left at set points around the course.
In shorter races water and a few gels are enough, but on longer runs its a much more complex balancing, sugars, salts, minerals and fluid levels, and on top of that you need to consider what transports well and what you can eat and keep down on the run.
So I might give dates a go and see how I get on with them during my training for the Hardmoors.