Brandon Fuller

BTR Speaker Series: Footcare for the Endurance Athlete

Last night, it was back to Boulder (I need to move) for the last in this season’s speaker series. As usual, I hit Larkburger beforehand to get my calories. However, I noticed the sign has gone up on the new Boulder Smashburger. Its next to Chipotle in the 29th Street Mall. Once both are open, the burger wars will be really decided. #2 and #3 next to each other? The choice will be tested.

JV came out past his bedtime for this meet up. We grabbed some seats and chatted while we waited to the thing to start. Always behind schedule at these talks. The speaker was Dr. Jeremy Rodgers. I had always thought he was a PT but he is not. He is a chiropractor. Gives me more perspective on his background. Many of my friends have been to him in the past for injury treatment. He seems to be well liked and often recommended. Anyway, I thought the discussion was going to help me with footcare for training and running something like Leadville. Jeremy had written articles on that stuff before so I thought it would be an expansion of that. However, it did not. There was one topic that seemed to permeate the discussion: barefoot running.

Buzz, the moderator, had set the tone that it was a major component of what he wanted the conversation to cover tonight. So Jeremy dipped into it a lot. Here is my list of points that Jeremy made and covered that caught my attention. As always, this was my take and I may have gotten some of it wrong.

1. Heal striking isn’t so bad if you aren’t heal weighting. The strike and then subsequently where you put your weight down at are in different phases of the step. You want to be mid-foot weighting your step.
2. Heal striking and then heal weighting shows a poorly efficient step. You see an abrupt shock to the foot prior to the normal weighing that occurs. Most injuries are caused by this abrupt shock to the foot.
   
   That blip on the upswing is the bad stuff. You want to get rid of that.
3. Gait analysis works. I haven’t even had one of these done but I know that my gait has changed over time. He showed a few good slow motion videos of good and bad gaits. Some of the bad gaits were from really fast people. Everyone is different of course but we all have a lot of similarities and there is a textbook way to do things.
4. Some people reach too far forward, or overstride. The easy way to tell is if you are able to see the knot in your shoe laces while looking down when you extend. You should see the laces but not the knot.
5. The inefficient gaits showed people standing straight up. Leaning forward was better.
6. Your fists and elbow position in the swing have a lot to do with your stride. They set the tone or range of motion.
7. The inefficient gaits showed people with 1/2 their stride in front and 1/2 behind. More efficient was 1/3 in front and 2/3 behind.
8. How does barefoot running improve gait? It naturally gets you more towards the front of your foot. You don’t reach with your toes as much. You don’t land on your heal as much. Your foot kind of hangs and falls flat as it was intended.
9. Barefoot running and minimalist footware have a lot in common for developing the right type of striking patterns.
10. Various injuries were shown distinguishing between acceleration and deceleration injuries. Most of the deceleration injuries were the ones that you all get and hear about. It was all in how you land the step, not how you push off.
11. He gave some good tidbits on fighting some injuries like ITBS. You can stretch all you want but it almost creates a vicious cycle and you keep getting it. The best solution was to strengthen your hip flexors and not drop your hip so much when striding. I like this because stretching doesn’t work for me but I do get sore hips.

When Jeremy finished his formal presentation, they moved to a discussion. This guy stood up and talked rather well about the benefits of barefoot and how it has changed him. He has a book coming out and he was promoting it. He didn’t venture far into the risks of barefoot or talk about the adverse effects but he did stress that you have to start slow (as in hundreds of yards) and build up. They have a group that helps you with your transition.

Another guy stood up and was selling super thin sandals that simulate barefoot all day long while giving you a layer of protection.

A few other people told stories about their VFFs and how amazing they are.

The barefoot love was in the room.

It was hard to read Jeremy. These other “fans” all had ancedotal and personal evidence of how this worked for them. Great. However, it almost seemed like Jeremy had a bubble over his head saying, “That’s great but don’t overdue it or you will be in my office”.

So overall, what’s my take? I have no plans at all to run roads, trails, or anything else with my exposed foot on the ground. I don’t need that. I could see doing some laps/drills in a soccer field like setting barefoot but I don’t have one right here. There is a park a few miles away and I could do some drills out there in the middle of a normal run and see how it goes. The word last night was that you feel total fatigue in your calves to start the day after. I like that kind of “new workout trama”. Otherwise, I am going to continue what I have been doing — putting less weight and less motion control into my shoes.

It started with my road shoes. I bailed on the big fat motion controls shoes that my original PT put me in. I started thinking he messed up but now I think it was more like giving my body an opportunity to heal the injury I had at the time and finish the season. Since then, I have been getting shoes with less motion control to the point now where I don’t have any. My shoes are “free” or neutral. This is a good thing. Your foot is designed to roll in order to disperse all the force of your step. If you lock it down, you are creating a new problem.

This can be overdone though. Jeremy talked about how he sees tons of cases of runners putting their entire training workload in wearing only racing flats. That is a bad idea.

Anyway, I have been doing all my road work in my LunarTrainers. While they do have a thicker sole, its uniform and doesn’t fatigue me in long runs. Then I strip down to LunarRacers for race day and its a whole new ballgame but my feet seem ready for them. I think it would kill you if you went from motion control trainers to racers on race day. Your foot would not know what to do.

However, for the trails, I am still waffling. In the past, I have run my big longer trail races in my road Nikes. Why? Read the blog stories but mostly for comfort. I haven’t found a good set of trail shoes that didn’t blister me or rub me. So I went with what I knew worked for that duration and it worked out OK. But I know this isn’t the long term answer. Jeremy was confirming that last night saying that trail shoes are built for the trails for a reason. Going into how they have a lower center of gravity. How they flex around rocks instead of levering on top of them. And on. For my winter runs, I have been in my TNF Rucky Chuckys. For one, I bought them so I need to wear them out. They are bigger and heavier. I think Tony called them “boats” when he saw them on me. But they provide a lot of support for the microspikes I have attached. I ran one day in the NB 100s and my toes were bloody from the spike chains digging into my toes. So, I do have 2 pairs of 100s sitting there. I wear them about town from time to time to keep them loose. I like the feel of them and I think I will give them a go once the trails dry out again. But as I have said in the past, I wonder if they can support me for 50 miles? And 100? I wonder if they are too minimal. Surely, I could build up to it but does the timeline work out? When will I be ready for them for those distances? Thinking I can train in them but might need something more solid for the bigger race days. Or I may wear them on the more runnable sections of Leadville and then switch into something more solid for Hope Pass. Things to think about.

But one thing is for sure, stripping down my shoes has been changing the way I run in a good way. I don’t have the video evidence to prove my gait has changed but I find myself much more controlled and steady. Jeremy pointed out that inefficient runners spend most of their energy moving their body up and down. The whole goal of running more efficiently is to stop that bouncing up and down motion which causes you to accelerate and decelerate ever so slightly with each step. You want to stay low to the ground and propel forward. So if you big “air shox” in your shoes — “You are going the wrong way!”

After the show, I headed over to Boulder Baked for my weekly cookie pickup. I am the mayor of that place now.