Barefoot Running

I gave this topic some brief mention back on the old blog, but after some time, I need to come back to it, cause this week it's gonna be big... I'm learning to run barefoot.

Yep. You heard me. And here's how I am gonna do it.


That, my friends, is my leg and foot (you can tell by the pasty, glow-in-the-dark pallor) ... sporting my new pair of (drumroll, please...) Vibram Five Fingers.

So these are my new shoes. Are they dorky? You better believe it. Will I look silly wearing them? Absa-smurfly. Will they allow me to run injury free while improving the biomechanics of my run? I believe they will. So I'm willing to look the part of the tool if it gets me where I need to be.

Back in October I tried a pair of these bad boys on, only to walk away in disappointment because the muscles in my feet did not have the flexibility and the give to articulate my toes enough to separate them into the toes of these shoes. I set out on a mission at that point to be able to strengthen my feet to help achieve that goal. Last week, I tried on a pair again and my work has paid off.

Since October I have been working on separating my toes as much as I could, using toe spreaders and toe spreading sandals. I also bought pairs of wicking socks that kept my toes separated so that I could keep wearing my sandals in the house when it was cold.

For 9 months I just sort of tried this out. What I noticed in the meantime was that my balance improved. My feet widened-- I always joked about my "ski feet," but the truth is that I struggled to find shoes in a AA width because they were so narrow. My overall flexibility improved and in small increments, the muscles that articulate my toes began to work. As of last week, my feet finally, comfortably, went into the Vibrams so I could walk around.

It's hard to describe how these things feel. I wore them for a workout at Crossfit last week-- we were doing powercleans and box jumps, so there was a fair amount of jumping involved. First thing I noticed was the extent to which my feet were it-- there isn't really a sole on these things so much as a thin layer of countoured rubber. The arch of the foot is left to do what it wants, and every place your foot wants to touch the floor, it will. My work over these past few months in yoga has been to pull up my arches and begin to stand on the outer parts of my feet while trying to engage that arch up off the floor. This will become more important as the process to running barefoot begins to take off. When jumping, the second thing I noticed is the inclination to hit on my heal and then let the rest of my feet sort of find their way to the ground. Doing this without the luxury of padding hurt. I had to begin to think about landing from a jump onto as much of my feet as I could... toes, ball, outside edge and heel, to disperse the jolt. Lastly, I needed to land lighter and more controlled. My first few powercleans were ugly and wobbly but eventually it felt good. My later box jumps felt the same way and in time I actually felt more stable doing this.

I decided as well that day to walk home in my shoes. Imagine walking for half an hour, on concrete and asphalt, totally barefoot. I've spent 36 years walking in shoes-- its rare for us all to walk around the world without them, so my first attempt at this was very strange. I could literally feel everything... every crack, every textured surface, every pebble. I noticed the extent to which my heel strike was very pronounced and hard. My inclination was to always keep my ankle at this 90 degree angle and just sort of plant my foot and roll over it and back up never allowing my ankle to release that angle. Remember back when I got my bike fitting and the fitter noted the degree to which my ankle was not flexing in either direction (the plantar flexion vs. dorsiflexion angles)-- it became pretty apparent where that behavior gets solidified-- basic walking in shoes. It felt so strange that within my first few paces, my heel strike had to adjust more forward to my midfoot and everything had to compensate. It's hard to describe this except to say that walking started taking place behind me instead of in front of me. Maybe if you have a long hallway or a yard or something you can experience this too-- when you walk in shoes, your land is forward of your hips. When you walk barefoot, your land is about equal with your hips. It's less about pulling up to where you foot landed and more about pushing back from where you currently are. It's a strange shift and hard to describe, but it became very apparent to me walking home that night.

The last several months I have been playing with a biomechanical style of running called POSE. In order to begin to adopt Pose, until I could run barefoot, I needed to cut back on my running and begin to train my body to run with a midfoot strike-- and one of the things that helped me to develop that while still providing me the cushioning of allowing my feet to strengthen, were some shoes called Newtons. Between the Newton-forced midfoot strike, and the migration towards Pose using some of the strengthening exercises they recommend, my body has finally reached a point of being ready to try barefoot running.

This week I am on the road in Denver, Colorado. I am looking forward to finding the local Crossfit affiliate and trying my first official short run in my vibrams-- in fact, I haven't packed any other shoes, so I'm backing myself into the proverbial corner of trying this out. What's the worst that can happen right?

Stay tuned for details-- this could get interesting.

I end you today on what I like to call Workout Porn (sorry Mom, but having tried Crossfit yourself you should appreciate this even more now)-- my all-time favorite Crossfit workout: The Bear. The picture of me in my profile is from doing this very workout.

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A Man Named Murph

I haven't really delved much into Crossfit since starting up this new blog, but this weekend gives me a good reason to finally do so. We took on a well known workout this weekend called Murph that has a really powerful story behind it.

I mentioned in the old blog, if you followed it, that there are several different kinds of workouts we do at Crossfit. Some are just your basic WOD (workout of the day) that are combinations of exercises designed to develop Crossfitters towards a primary goal-- functional fitness. While I promise to spend some time writing about functional fitness (its a fascinating topic), Crossfit sums up the goal of functional fitness as being able to "move large loads over long distances quickly." Under that overarching goal and objective, some workouts stand out as particularly noteworthy, and many fall under one of 2 noteworthy groups-- "Hero Workouts" and "The Girls." Hero workouts are named for people who were killed in the line of duty, either in Iraq or Afghanistan or even a few in service back here in the US for the police, etc. The Girls are workouts that are named for the many notable women that have been influential in the creation of Crossfit over the many years. People typically use The Girls as benchmarks ("whats your Fran time?") and the Hero Workouts as rally points where you know you are going to have to put it all out there to get through.

This weekend, my Crossfit affiliate took on Murph, a Hero Workout named in honor of Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy of Patchogue, NY who was killed in Afghanistan in June 2005. Murph, as he was known to his fellow Seals, received several honors including the Purple Heart and the Medal of Honor for his service and the story of his death is an amazing one. One of his favorite workouts, that he called "Body Armor" became one of the most popular Crossfit workouts to date, and is one that most affiliates do at least annually, if not twice in a year. Murph apparently did this workout wearing his 20lbs of body armor, thus giving it the name he used until it was memorialized by a crossfit workout in his honor in August 2005.

Murph consists of a 1 mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats and another 1 mile run. Many people do it wearing a weight vest of 20 lbs. This past weekend, I got my first taste of Murph.

As with any high-rep pull-up workout, you expect your hands will rip open. Callouses are one thing we get used to, but high rep pull up workouts inevitably mean your callouses will tear off. I had this happen to me several weeks ago, right in the very center of my hand and boy did it hurt (I included a fun pic I took after cleaning it all up a little, just so you can see what I mean). I discovered since the wonders of gymnastics grips and managed to spare my hands this weekend, but I was in a very small minority. This weekend we bled.

As this was my first time taking on Murph, I opted to do a half-Murph, dropping the volume of all the requirements by half. I ran 1/2 a mile, did 50 pull ups, 100 push ups, 150 squats, ran a half a mile. It took me 29:52 to complete. It was an ass kicker. I reached a point several weeks ago that I no longer need assistance for pull-ups, but this high a volume I went for the slightest bit of support (a long white rubberband) that would offset just a little of my weight. In order to make it more challenging and to compensate for that rubberband, I worked my pull-ups to the Chest-to-Bar standard, instead of the Chin-to-Bar that is acceptable in this kind of volume. The rest was as strict as it comes... it took me a long time to be able to manage chest-to-deck strict push-ups at that volume, but I did well with it and in the end, I am really pleased with my time.

It was amazing to watch some of the activity around this workout. The box (what we call affiliates) was buzzing with excitement for this WOD and in the end we had 36 total competitors for the event. One of our strongest competitors did it with the weight vest and finished the whole thing in 45:45. It was awe inspiring. And an ass kicker.

A workout like this needs a strategy. Turns out that the 3 middle components (the pull-ups, push-ups and squats) did not need to be done in sequential order, so I decided to shoot for 10 rounds of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 squats. This would allow me to let each component rest for a little while without slowing me down. I never thought I'd live for the squats, but those to me were my saving grace-- if there's one thing I have in spades, its leg strength, so doing 15 squats, while strenuous, was nothing in comparison to the push-ups. The runs felt awesome-- I think I made most of my time up in those runs, despite being very measured in my approach to them-- I didn't go out full throttle on the first run which I think caused a lot of people to gas out in the rest of the workout. In general I felt like I kept a nice consistent pace throughout the whole thing and wound up getting one of the better half Murph times.

I am looking forward to the next time we take on Murph being able to do it as prescribed (as RXed, in Crossfit lingo), but in the meantime, I gotta say, Murph is gonna be a special workout for me for a long time.

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