Ok, so I’ve just been on a barefoot running website, and it referred me, the reader, to a scientific paper that is alleged to prove that humans evolved as endurance runners. The very strong implication, or even assumption, that is made from this study is that stuff like marathon running, and indeed all long-distance runnng, is a natural expression of our humanity.
This is not true.
I knew those straps would come in handy
If you ever read superstar conditioning man Steve Maxwell’s blogs, you’ll know he loves a pice of kit called the Jungle Gym, made by Lifeline. And if you ever read Mark Sisson’s Daily Apple, you’ll know how he advocates making your own strength equipment if possible.
You could barely contain yourself, I know. If any of the forums I used to lurk on in order to promote the now defunct Runners Daily site (well, the main site is defunct, but I have revived the blog because I like blogging) present a typical profile of consumers, then people, including runners, put off purchasing something until they have asked on several forums about it, read all the reviews in review sites, read the reviews on the commercial sites, and even asked people who blog about it. (I’ve had a fair few queries from the blogosphere asking for more information about Fivefingers so that the questioner can make their mind up about a purchase). In fact I think they have more fun asking things like ‘I’m a midfoot striker but tend to heel strike when I get tired, do you think these shoes would still suit me?’ than actually buying the damn things and using them.
Read the rest of this entry »
Mindfulness
I was out for a little run the other day, as usual paying attention to my form – doing mental sweeps up and down my back, shoulders, arms, neck, head, hamstrings, footstrike, knee flexion - checking where my buttocks were, monitoring the many sources of pain in my body, occasionally checking my cadence, as well as monitoring my breathing, RPE and pace and not forgetting the paramount aspect of all of this, appreciating the pleasure of being out in the open air, running on the treelined trails around the the fringes of Epping Forest, when I passed another runner (I know, he was going very slowly for me to pass him).
Of course only barefoot is barefoot. No matter what ‘barefoot’ shoes are on the market, and out there in the best possible faith (and I’m not talking about Nike Frees), there is no substitute for going barefoot.
There are shoes, however, that represent a step (see what I did there?) away from 20/21st century convention and towards a barefoot experience, most notably Vibram’s brilliant Fivefingers (although I understand that recent models have thicker, rather than thinner soles). Read the rest of this entry »
Barefoot running workshop
Huw Davies
BTA Level 3 Coach and Coach Educator
Matt Wallden
MSc Ost Med, CHEK IV, CHEK Faculty, Osteopath, Naturopath
Date: Saturday March 7th 2009
Venue: TBC – but it will be in or near Weybridge, Surrey, UK
The low down:
Learn how barefoot running can optimise walking and running posture
Understand how posture can optimise efficiency in running and enhance VO2 max.
Learn the importance of lower leg strength and range of motion through Achilles and calf.
Find out why optimal foot function are critical in sports performance.
Learn how the nervous system is key to results in your training and how you can effectively condition it.
Discover why hamstring activation is a vital aspect of running performance and how to facilitate your hamstrings.
Leave with a personalised program for your gait
Course structure:
A primarily practical course, with theory components punctuated throughout.
The day will start with an introduction to the benefits of going barefoot, with opportunity for Q&A.
By mid-morning we will go through several simple tests to evaluate lower leg strength, gait analysis and whole body kinetic-chain function, with a focus on running.
After lunch we will go through corrective measures to address posture and body strength to maximize performance levels and minimize risk of injury.
Once lunch has settled we will go for a full Fivefingers test-drive with a 5K woodland excursion; whether you want to walk it, run it, or walk-run it is entirely up to you, but this will allow you to put in to practice what you have learned during the day.
Finally, we will round up the day with closing comments and discussion of the groups’ experiences of the run and any questions that may have arisen.
This course is designed for:
those who want to run better – runners, triathletes, sportspeople, anyone who runs!
those who want to incorporate running into a more holistic health program (coaches, therapists, personal trainers)
those who want to go barefoot as part of a more functional primal lifestyle
Course Investment:
£120
Each participant will receive a free pair of Fivefingers Sprints or Fivefinger KSO’s worth £79.99.
Special early-bird bonuses:
Participants will receive a complimentary running shirt and a booklet on foot strength development; worth £45 when you book before end February.
–
Primal Lifestyle Ltd
www.fivefingers.co.uk
Twice recently I have had occasion to curse runners – under my breath, admittedly. I fundamentally will always defend runners almost to the hilt, but on these two occasions I bemoaned their gross stupidity. Runners are humans, after all, and most humans are stupid. On each occasion one of these runners ran out into the road that I was turning into in my car, complete with precious cargo of three-year-old daughter strapped into the back seat. They didn’t look, and they didn’t slow down, so both times I had to make an emergency stop and risk getting rammed from behind, which with my daughter in the back was a horrifying thought. (I’m not too keen on the idea of her daddy getting hurt, either, actually).
Now the reason these runners stepped blithely off the kerb into the path of my not-speeding motor was that they were listening to their iPods. How would the law view it if my nightmare scenario ensued, and in stopping suddenly for this cretinous, moronic, irresponsible, iPod-listening runner in order not to cause them harm, I was rammed from behind and my tiny, vulnerable precious little girl was hurt? First of all I suppose the driver of the car behind would be responsible, because you always are when you hit the car in front, no matter how suddenly it stops. But if was shown that I had stopped unreasonably – for example, in the eyes of the law, stopping for a dog is reasonable, but stopping for a cat is not – then could a third party, the stupid runner could be invoked?
Next year the world Athletics Championships will be in Berlin. Now every two years, these championships were kicked off in 1983, intended to be held every four years, and the first host city was the Finnish capital and athletics hotbed Helsinki. Last year it was Osaka, Japan. In 2011 Daegu in Korea will play host. After Helsinki it was Rome, then Tokyo, Stuttgart, Gothenburg… not in the UK, and not the US either, surprisingly. 2013 will be Moscow, by the way.
The London Olympic bid was won because it promised a legacy, for London and for Britain. The International Olympic Committee were very close to handing the games to Paris because the French infrastructure is so good: the transport system is in need of little improvement, and the main stadium is already there. But the IOC was swayed by the gaggle of smiling little Londoners who featured in the bid, and with their future in mind, awarded the 2012 Olympic Games to London. That legacy is about participating in sport, getting fitter and healthier, against a tide of vacuous, shallow, materialsitic, self-serving X-Factor aspiring, Premiership ogling ambitions that promise millionaire status for one or two, and obese oblivion for the rest.
Since that day, the question of what to do with the London stadium after the three weeks of the Olympcs has been a knotty one. To pay for itself, and hence avoid the taxpayer being heavily out of pocket, the stadium must go to a big football club, with the all the attendant huge revenue that that would imply, ran the first argument, and then it seemed to be just a question of seeing whether that club would be West Ham, or Leyton Orient, or whoever.
Then it looked like one or two people remembered why that stadium is being built in the first place – to provide a legacy for those little Londoners – and then the talk was of keeping the stadium for athletics.
Then IOC boss Jacques Rogge, bless him, said it was probably better to have the stadium converted to some big professional sport (football, maybe?), citing the stadium built for the Atlanta Olympics (remember them?) in 1996 now being used for pro baseball – ‘which keeps people interested in sport’, he says. Keeps fat Americans interested in sitting in a stand eating hotdogs, keeps dollars going into the same old pot of pro baseball, gets kids to think of how they will spend their dollars and behave when they are older, on watching baseball, some might say. Not a great legacy for the future health of kids in Atlanta, but there are so many good college tracks that access to facilities for the few who choose to run and jump and throw is not a huge problem.
Now IAAF President Lamine Diack has expressed his great regret that this is the case. The USA does not have an athletics stadium, he says, that can host the World Championships. This despite the fact that the USA has hosted two recent Games. In both cases the stadiums are now used for pro sport, LA for American football, Atlanta for baseball. This is ‘nothing to be proud of’ says Diack, pointing out that athletics is the core Olympic sport, yet it is struggling to attract kids to it, when football in the UK, and basketball and football in the US, for example, have such a stranglehold; and urging London to keep a venue where world class runners can duke out a World championship and where kids who watched them can turn up and train or compete a week later.
Let us keep the Olympic Stadium for athletics. Dual use is a possibility – the success of the Stade de France, which has hosted an Athletics World Championships, and World Cup finals in rugby and football, is a shining example. I like football a lot – hate how it is developing, though – and if the end result of all these Olympic shenanigans is more football, more money going into the same pot, more promotion for Sky and Nike and adidas, then I won’t be held responsible for my actions. (Only joking, arson was the furthest thing from my mind.)
Happy campaigning!
‘I hate the way the media fawn over Paula Radcliffe’. – Comment on BBC site.
‘The marathon has moved on now, she has been left behind.’ Ditto.
‘Paula Radcliffe has been accused by her critics of being a bottler’, and:
‘When Radcliffe collapsed in Athens four years ago, notable columnists descended upon her as if she had brought shame on the nation simply by being human.’ Both from a national newspaper, the first from a commment, the second from an article by an athletics correspondent.
As everyone knows, Paula Radcliffe won the New York Marathon in style yesterday (as we predicted she would), and there seems to have been some surprise at the fact in the media. Due possibly to her showing in Beijing, or more generally to the common perception that she can’t perform on the global stage and runs for money in big city marathons.
Steve Ovett is quite rightly lauded as one of the greatest runners ever to lace up a pair of spikes. He was a godlike runner who added dedication to his huge talent to produce a string of world records and championship victories. Hang on, though. He couldn’t win the 1500m in Helsinki, in the inaugural World Championships, and his performances in Los Angeles in 1984 were nowhere. He ended his career with one Olympic gold and one bronze, both from Moscow 1980, and on the world stage, that was it. For someone of his talent, his medal tally has got ‘bottler’ written all over it. But we know this is not true, and as far as I am aware, no one has ever labelled him as such. When Ovett didn’t perform it was down to interruptions to his preparations due to illness or injury. This happens to every elite runner. Sometimes a bad patch coincides with the big global championships, and that’s life. Shortly after being beaten into a very disappointing 4th in Helsinki in 1983, Ovett broke the world 1500m record. He had swiftly got back to a peak of fitness, and back to his unbeatable self.
Steve Cram, who was the winner of that 1500m race in Helsinki, and also one of the greatest runners in history, finished his career with one Olympic medal, a silver, and that World gold. Not much better than
Ovett’s haul, so presumably, given again the mismatch betwen talent, world record performances and global medals, also a bottler? Of course not, and no one would ever say so. Cram was considered a very hot favourite for 1500m gold in Seoul in 1988 but injury got in the way. It’s part and parcel of running. He certainly didn’t bottle it.
Now, as a middle-distance runner, you can race a lot. While you are at your peak, you might be able to produce quite a few top-class races in, say, a three-week window. So if you fail in a global race, you can, as Ovett did, go out and wow the world a moment or two later. And of course you can use the first race in a sequence of five or six races as a sharpener, part of the training process. And have a little rest midseason. and come back strong in August or September.
Life is not like that for a marathoner. Which is something the lard-arsed media seem to conveniently overlook when it comes to someone like Paula Radcliffe. She didn’t bottle it at Athens, she was ill. She didn’t bottle it in Beijing either, she had a stress-fracture. But it simply not feasible as a marathoner to go out 10 days later and make amends for letting down the fickle and for the most part equally lard-arsed British public by setting a new world record. When a top marathon runner steps up to the line and then fails, that failure is magnified by the fact that it stands out starkly in a season of little or no other races. But it’s a fairly simple concept to grasp, isn’t it?
Let’s be clear. Ms Radcliffe has a record, 2.15.25 that many elite men would not beat, let alone women. She has come back from injury to beat a quality marathon field – make that ‘destroy a quality marathon field’ – by two minutes. She did the same to win the World Championship in 2005. As we said in an earlier blog, when she is fit, she is untouchable – still. The media do fawn over her, because that is what the media tend to do. But being fawned over for being the very best in the world is to be expected. Look at the fawning David Beckham gets/got, and he was just a fairly good player with one very refined skill.
The marathon hasn’t moved on – no one is getting near Paula’s record. She’s not a bottler. The media have in them several hypocritical, ignorant backstabbers who are happy to berate her if she fails to reach her high standards every time she chooses to race. Let’s celebrate the fact that one of the greatest runners of all time is a Brit and a wonderful human and ignore the media bleating.
Happy running!
After Paula Radcliffe’s searing victory at this weekend’s Great South Run, turning on the heat in a cold, wet and windy Portsmouth, the question is: how will Paula do in next week’s biggie, the New York City Marathon?
First of all, is she fit? A fully-fit Radcliffe is, on paper, a favourite to win pretty much any race of 10 miles and upwards. Very few athletes have the capacity to throw in a 4.57 mile early on in a race and not crash and burn afterwards (winning in New York a year ago, mile 2 went by in 4.59!). And it looks very much as though the weather, not her fitness, prevented her from breaking Lornah Kiplagat’s world best over the 10-mile distance.
