For many years I was a runner, forty to fifty miles a week, until an old ski injury caught up with me. After a couple of years on crutches I took up biking to replace that endorphin fix and I absolutely love biking. Running, however, is such a joy and I have really missed it so I was delighted when I read Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, by Christopher McDougall.
Evidently, we are literally designed, genetically engineered you might say, to run and to run barefoot. Running shoes alter your stride to land on your heel instead of the balls of your feet jarring the hips and causing many other injuries. However, if you run as nature intended landing on the balls of your feet the impact is absorbed much differently, efficiently so that the Tarahumara tribes people, ultramarathoners, keep running into their nineties.
So, with the help of some Vibram Five Finger shoes that allow the toes to splay and grab, the arch to bend and the calves to absorb impact and a skinny little sole to protect from stickers, I am hoping to add some running back into my endorphin fix. So far, so good.
