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Running Scared

January 27, 2010 By 70 Comments

header runningscared1 Running ScaredPlay­ing the Fear Card

Mike Gol­fred­son, CEO of Road­Run­ner Sports, has lost it. He’s been caught run­ning his mouth off in pub­lic. In a clas­sic knee-jerk fash­ion, Mike makes a fee­ble attempt to scare cus­tomers away from the grow­ing bare­foot run­ning movement.

Try­ing to play to people’s fears in an effort to stop them from being informed will surely fail. Espe­cially when research from none other than Har­vard is being pub­lished. Try­ing to com­bat infor­ma­tion with fear doesn’t work for long (one need only look at some pre­vi­ous US admin­is­tra­tions to see that). Indeed, the only effec­tive way to go up against infor­ma­tion is with cred­i­ble and con­vinc­ing counter-information.

See Mike’s email for your­self below.

It’s Just Plain Bad for Business

As many of you are aware, I am a firm believer that run­ning bare­foot makes a ton of sense and that we can all ben­e­fit from doing at least some bare­foot run­ning. How­ever, I only need to put my busi­ness cap on to see plenty of rea­sons why Mike’s newslet­ter is a big mis­take. It breaks some car­di­nal rules of cus­tomer engage­ment and inter­ac­tion. Mike should have held his tongue (and his head of mar­ket­ing should be fired and a new PR agency hired – one with plenty of expe­ri­ence clean­ing up after reck­less CEOs).

Here are some of the rules Mike broke by send­ing such an email out to cus­tomers along with expla­na­tions for why it’s bad for his business:

1.  Let your emo­tions guide your state­ments, not be your state­ments. The whole newslet­ter reeks of per­sonal emo­tions. Using such strong lan­guage as bare­foot run­ning is a “major injury wait­ing to hap­pen,” and bold type with mul­ti­ple excla­ma­tion points is over the top emo­tion­ally.  Tak­ing a per­sonal tone with cus­tomers is a good move if you have some­thing pos­i­tive to say. For exam­ple, shar­ing a per­sonal run over the week­end and how it reminded you of why you love run­ning can offer moti­va­tion. How­ever, in dis­cred­it­ing an activ­ity that has many peo­ple enthu­si­as­tic from a per­sonal stance can come across like you are using the com­pany plat­form to lash out.

2.  Back up your state­ments with ver­i­fied facts. Mike obvi­ously knows that bare­foot run­ning has been in the press a lot lately. He there­fore is aware that many of his cus­tomers could have read some of these arti­cles. Though Mike only ref­er­ences read­ing the head­lines, he’s surely read or been told how many of these arti­cles actu­ally men­tion pos­si­ble ben­e­fits of run­ning bare­foot. That’s prob­a­bly why he felt the need to send out this email. So, why doesn’t he pro­vide some sort of research to back his state­ments up, know­ing very well that there is research sup­port­ing the oppo­site of what he’s say­ing? Not pro­vid­ing sup­port will result in a loss of cred­i­bil­ity as an informed part­ner in people’s run­ning endeavors.

3.  Treat your cus­tomers as intel­li­gent indi­vid­u­als. Busi­nesses just never seem to learn that talk­ing down to peo­ple only back­fires. “Don’t blindly fol­low the lat­est trends” infers that with­out his help peo­ple would do just that. How can that pos­si­bly have a good effect? What must Mike think of his cus­tomers if he thinks “pea-sized rocks” will leave them side­lined for weeks? He makes it sound like he thinks his cus­tomers are all frail invalids who will suf­fer a mas­sive injury from step­ping on “pea size rocks.” Give your cus­tomers more respect than that.

4.  Pro­vide value in every inter­ac­tion. It’s quite sim­ple: don’t inter­rupt peo­ple unless you can offer them a solu­tion to a real need of theirs. Pro­vid­ing a dis­count, an added ser­vice, or new and help­ful infor­ma­tion often meets this cri­te­ria. In this email, though, Mike offers noth­ing new. A call to shop for new shoes at the end of the email, after say­ing run­ning with no shoes is bad, bad, bad, is not only void of value, it’s a final reminder to the reader (just in case they didn’t make the con­nec­tion already that bare­foot run­ning is very bad for your busi­ness) that this email is all about sell­ing more shoes. So much for the open­ing state­ment about car­ing for people’s well­be­ing. It sounds like money comes first for Mike.

5.  Never, ever, look des­per­ate. Per­haps one of the biggest mis­takes Mike made in send­ing this email out is that it makes him look like his back is against the wall, and like a scared ani­mal, the claws come out. The say­ing, “’Em are fight­ing words,” comes to mind. As it will for RoadRunner’s cus­tomers. Tak­ing a defen­sive stance smells of des­per­a­tion. And cus­tomers don’t like doing busi­ness with des­per­ate com­pa­nies. They want peo­ple they can trust will be around over the long haul. Lead­ers of prod­uct and dia­logue. Com­pa­nies set­ting the stan­dards, not try­ing to tear new stan­dards down.

image thumb Running Scared

Some Run­ning Retail­ers Embrace Bare­foot Running

“The whole bare­foot run­ning thing,” as Mike puts it in his email, isn’t inher­ently a bad thing for retail­ers of run­ning gear. Zom­bieRun­ner, a store in Palo Alto, CA, focused on the trail and ultra run­ning mar­kets has actu­ally embraced bare­foot run­ning. After read­ing the book Born to Run, co-owners Don Lun­dell and Gillian Robin­son, hosted sev­eral bare­foot run­ning clin­ics where the author of Born to Run, Chris McDougall, along with one of the bare­foot run­ners men­tioned in the book, Bare­foot Ted, taught peo­ple how to tran­si­tion back into run­ning with­out shoes. Par­tic­i­pants weren’t allowed to wear shoes, not even the very min­i­mal Vibram Five Fingers.

When asked why a retailer, whose shoe sales make up a good per­cent­age of their over­all rev­enue would actu­ally pro­mote bare­foot run­ning, Gillian matter-of-factly responded that it was good for their runners.

Therein lies the dif­fer­ence between com­pa­nies like Road­Run­ner Sports who lash out against bare­foot run­ning and those who not only accept it but embrace it. Don and Gillian are focused on spread­ing the joy of run­ning that they expe­ri­ence. They sell only prod­ucts they would run in and firmly believe are the best for run­ners. Road­Run­ner Sports, I’m afraid, val­ues the bot­tom line more than run­ning. It prob­a­bly wasn’t the case when Road­Run­ner Sports started, but as they’ve grown they’ve for­got­ten run­ning and what’s best for the sport.

As to why exactly why Mike wrote the email, your guess is as good as mine. It prob­a­bly came down to money. He’s prob­a­bly pissed that he turned down what has become the hottest shoe on the mar­ket, the Vibram Five Fin­gers. Or his world­view is based on the belief that man is not as smart as machine. What­ever the case may be, Mike should think twice about his next move.

When you’re next in the mar­ket for run­ning gear or infor­ma­tion, think about the peo­ple behind the com­pany. Are they in it for the love of the sport? Do they sell any­thing they wouldn’t buy them­selves? Is what’s best for you dri­ving their busi­ness decisions?

Full-Transparency: I receive no perks from  any retailer nor am I cur­rently part of any affil­i­ate pro­gram. I was a pre­vi­ous cus­tomer of Road­Run­ner and am now a cus­tomer of Zom­bieRun­ner among other retail­ers of run­ning gear.

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  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    Clyton, maybe i’m miss­ing the point here but he is just talk­ing sense.….as there is a lot of sharp things out there that will cause dam­age if bare foot. He is knock­ing bare foot run­ning as fr as i can see.….. and he even men­tions min­i­mal runners.

  • http://www.downtown-runner.com/ Bob (Down­town Runner)

    I couldn’t say it any bet­ter. Spot on!

    @Flag: If Gol­fred­son knew any­thing about bare­foot run­ning he would know that rocks and glass can eas­ily be avoided and that after a while small rocks are not a prob­lem because of the way bare­foot run­ners step lightly and get used to small items on the road. I’ve been run­ning bare­foot in Man­hat­tan (of all places) for 6 months now and have never had any­thing more than a blis­ter. As Mcdou­gal says, I take two very highly tuned instru­ments along with me.…. my eyes. When I see some­thing I don’t step on it. And when I do acci­den­tally I quickly shift my weight to min­i­mize the impact.

    The main point is that there is not rea­son for Gol­fred­son to do this. What does it accomplish?

  • http://naturallyengineered.com/blog/ Dave C.

    Great write-up on the sit­u­a­tion recently! Con­sid­er­ing the tim­ing of this mar­ket­ing move (shortly before key research was released) it seems to me it is less about con­cern over cus­tomers’ feet and more of con­cern over company’s profits.

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    Yes, exactly.

  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    This guy is not attack­ing the bare­foot move­ment– just high­light­ing the poten­tial dan­gers when it comes to glass and such on the roads. As much as it pains me to say it– i’d like to see you all run bare­foot on the rocky and sharp trails you find out in the “wild” and then come back to his advice.

    @bob Run­ning bare foot for 6 months is just that. Small “items” on the road is a far cry from sharp bro­ken glass and other items that can punc­ture the skin.

    I’ve see this type of argu­ment many times before online. Apple com­put­ers vs PC’s. Road bikes vs Moun­tain bikes. Linux vs Win­dows. Sin­gle speed vs gears. And now its bare­foot vs run­ners. I’m not sure why folk take it upon them­selves to obsess about such trends.….and take it so per­son­ally. If you like run­ning bare­foot great. If you don’t…great! JUST RUN. No one is right or wrong.…..

    By the way– wear­ing vibrams ain’t no barefoot.

    • http://www.downtown-runner.com/ Bob (Down­town Runner)

      @Paul Have you ever spent any time in lower Man­hat­tan? Chi­na­town? Broad­way? There is plenty of sharp objects and worse around.

      You are miss­ing the point about the arti­cle. If my mother, or wife, or friend warns me about the “dan­gers” of bare­foot run­ning that’s one thing. But when the “Chief Run­ner” of a com­pany that makes its liv­ing from sell­ing shoes does this its a dif­fer­ent story. Par­tic­u­larly when right below the the “warn­ing” are links directly to the online store? You don’t see some­thing a lit­tle self-serving in that? Does he feel THAT threatened?

      And.… do you really think that I don’t already KNOW that there are rocks and glass and other things on the streets I run on? I’ve been run­ning 35 years. I think I know a rock when I see one. The mes­sage of the arti­cle is condescending.

      And yes, wear­ing Vibrams is NOT bare­foot­ing. I never said it was. When I run bare­foot I call it that. When I wear VFFs I say so. You can check out my blog to ver­ify this. You can even watch a video of my barefeet run­ning on the lower east side of NYC.

  • http://naturallyengineered.com/blog/ Dave C.

    “i’d like to see you all run bare­foot on the rocky and sharp trails you find out in the “wild” and then come back to his advice.”

    What do you think humans have been run­ning in for the last 2 mil­lion years? Nike Moccasins?

    “By the way– wear­ing vibrams ain’t no barefoot.”

    Indeed, though I am work­ing on a med­ical pro­ce­dure to graft the neo­prene to the bot­toms of my feet. The point is, highly cush­ioned and con­strict­ing ath­letic shoes func­tion totally dif­fer­ent from Vibrams, and the bare­foot even more so.
    Bare­foot > Vibram FF > Nike Free > Nike Air

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    Well Paul, I got to respect­fully dis­agree with you on a few things!

    First, I’ve per­son­ally run over a vari­ety of sur­faces and had no prob­lem (once my feet were accus­tomed to skin on ground, which can take some time to get used to). Glass isn’t much of an issue, in real­ity, more a men­tal hang-up than any­thing else. Bob’s point about run­ning in a much lighter, quicker form is dead on. Your feet sim­ply don’t hit the ground very hard or for very long, so even when I acci­den­tally step on a rock, it only stings for a few seconds.

    That being said, run­ning bare­foot is only a means to an end.

    Let me repeat that, because it’s impor­tant, and dis­tin­guishes me and prob­a­bly you as well from the bare­foot fanat­ics. Bare­foot run­ning is only a means to an end.

    What I mean is that it’s all about a good form that pri­mar­ily decreases the chance of injury. I do believe strongly that run­ning bare­foot, and only run­ning bare­foot, will teach you the proper, nat­ural way to run. How­ever, if you can run that way in shoes, fine. I would just argue that the vast major­ity of shoes out there (any­thing not in the Min­i­mal cat­e­gory I out­line in another post) will likely lead to some issues at some point.

    For that rea­son I don’t care if any­one thinks of Vibrams being bare­foot shoes or not. Because if they let you run almost the same way you would going bare­foot, that’s great. The point is Vibrams enable you to run in a bare­foot form. It’s all about the form.

    Regard­ing your point of view that Mr. G’s email is fine because stones and glass are a real prob­lem, you’re miss­ing the point. I’m crit­i­ciz­ing his email from a busi­ness per­spec­tive. He might as well be whin­ing about ice cream cones melt­ing on your hand for all I care. The issue I take is through a marketing/brand/business lens.

    From a run­ning point of view, though, he’s also wrong. Small peb­bles, large rocks, glass, all really not an issue at all if you are will­ing to run almost daily and keep your eyes open. I would gladly make the mis­take of step­ping on a nail going bare­foot. The Asics I ran in helped con­tribute to 8 months of dis­abil­ity. That’s FAR worse than a minor cut or bruise.

    Gotta try it, man!

  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    @ Dave. These “humans” are not you not I.….or the aver­age run­ner. We are not talk­ing about sea­soned tribal hunters here– we are talk­ing about the aver­age west­ern per­son. Before you jump on teh band wagon and start rant­ing about what you can and can­not do bare­foot– maybe go try it your­self. Once you have run an Ultra bare­foot then you have grounds to argue– until then– you just keep dreaming.

    • http://blog.naturallyengineered.com/ David Csonka

      Even if we are talk­ing about min­i­mal­ist shoes vs. Nike, min­i­mal­ist would win out. Take huaraches for exam­ple. Civ­i­lized man has been using san­dle based shoes like that for thou­sands of years. The Roman legions marched hun­dreds of miles across the Mediter­ranean on basi­cally the same type of shoe that the Tarahu­mara indi­ans in Mex­ico run ultra­ma­rathons in.

      The real band­wagon is the one fired up in the 70’s that even­tu­ally led peo­ple to believe that they were bet­ter off with atro­phied lumps of flesh and bone, encased in nylon and rub­ber coffins (high-end run­ning shoes), that used to be feet. :D

      Either way, I’m new to the whole bare­foot thing, so I won’t pre­tend to be a shin­ing exam­ple of its right­eous­ness. But I do have a M.S. in Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence, and I have a good knack for rec­og­niz­ing well con­structed sci­en­tific experiments/papers. This new research in Nature, com­ing out of Har­vard is sig­nif­i­cant, and is worth tak­ing seriously.

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    Paul, you ok man? You don’t sound like your usual chip­per self. Your tone is com­ing across rather strongly. We have no way of know­ing if Dave has jumped on any band­wagon here, let’s assume the best of folks. And even if he has, that’s not a bad thing in and of itself. Run­ning an ultra is by no means the bar here. Like you said ear­lier, just run­ning and enjoy­ing it is the point. No one has to run an ultra to prove them­selves, though it is a fan­tas­tic feat and goal to have.

    You have a point that we don’t all nec­es­sar­ily run every day like our ances­tors. The wost thing would be for any­one to try any new activ­ity or form and not ease into it, test if it’s right or not. But I bet every­one com­ment­ing here is doing that.

    Let’s remem­ber the focus is on help­ing peo­ple run injury free. That’s it.

  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    I’m still my chip­per self– i just dis­agree with your point of view with regards to this matter.

    As you said: “Let’s remem­ber the focus is on help­ing peo­ple run injury free. That’s it.” Isn’t this what the guys email is focus­ing on? Surly you can see that if an aver­age run­ner just binned their run­ners and headed out and ran on the road that they would get injured?

    I think that you are all look­ing far to much into the email to be hon­est. I just don’t see it as a dis­re­gard or anti bare­foot run­ning email. *shrugs*

    • http://www.downtown-runner.com/ Bob (Down­town Runner)

      So you think his pur­pose was purely to warn us humans about the evils of rocks and glass? And its just coin­ci­dence that right below his “warn­ing” there are links to buy his prod­ucts? You don’t think there is even a hint of self-serving inten­tion there? If not, then yes, we just disagree.

  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    “Regard­ing your point of view that Mr. G’s email is fine because stones and glass are a real prob­lem, you’re miss­ing the point. I’m crit­i­ciz­ing his email from a busi­ness per­spec­tive. He might as well be whin­ing about ice cream cones melt­ing on your hand for all I care. The issue I take is through a marketing/brand/business lens.”

    I apol­o­gise then as your post does not come across like this at all.

    “The Asics I ran in helped con­tribute to 8 months of dis­abil­ity. That’s FAR worse than a minor cut or bruise.”

    I’m pretty sure that it was poor tech­nique rather than the run­ners (this is what i read and maybe wrong). And good tech­nique can be learnt regard­less of what you have (or donot have) on your feet.

    As for try­ing it. I have. I’ve run a few times bare­foot on the beach and grassy fields which was awe­some. I felt ‘free” and totally cool to con­nect to the ground. For a few short “fun” runs– it’s great. The dif­fer­ence is that I run with the same tech­nique with run­ners on too– which all of us can. Bare­foot run­ning is just that. If you run in some min­i­mal shoes with good tech­nique– what’s the dif­fer­ence exactly?

    • http://www.downtown-runner.com/ Bob (Down­town Runner)

      “And good tech­nique can be learnt regard­less of what you have (or donot have) on your feet.”

      This is another place we dis­agree. I ran for 34 year in “run­ners”. I tried lots of tech­niques, forms, meth­ods. Still had chronic pains. It wasn’t until I ran bare­foot that I really learned how to run prop­erly. It wasn’t until I got con­stant feed­back from my whole foot. It wasn’t until my toes were able to get into the action. It wasn’t until I could make adjust­ments in real time when I felt some­thing tightening.

      Per­haps some can learn to run prop­erly with run­ners on. But even in that unlikely sce­nario run­ning shoes allow the rel­e­vant mus­cles to get lazy again and for heal strik­ing to slip back into the form.

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    Did you read the 5 points I out­lined? Seems like you are hav­ing a dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tion than what I wrote. From a purely mar­ket­ing stand point, stu­pid move. He’s Def­i­nitely not into care for his consumer’s feet as much as wallet.

  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    To be fair.…how can you read so much into a few sen­tences from an email? As for a stu­pid move against customers.…like i said.…he is advis­ing them to be safe…and if they are keen on bare­foot run­ning try some medium style shoes.

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    Dude, you have got to be kid­ding me! There’s just no way one could run the same in the huge Asics Kayanos as barefeet. Yes it was poor tech­nique — because of the shoes!

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    15 years of mar­ket­ing con­sult­ing experience.

  • http://www.njsportsmed.com/ Marc

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9itkEkcQ8WM
    Is it the shoes? It’s gotta be the shoes.

  • JS

    Thanks for speak­ing up! My first thought was “Wow, I don’t think I have the desire to ever pur­chase some­thing from RRS again.” Whether I’m bare­foot­ing it or not! I’m doing about 50/50 now, and as long as you’re not stu­pid (i.e. run through glass), I feel it’s super ben­e­fi­cial to me. Flat out say­ing it’s bad was a huge mis­take. I’ve pur­chased many cloth­ing items through RRS in the past when I haven’t been able to find them at the local store — I’ll be find­ing a new source.

  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    To state that it was the shoes that gave you “bad tech­nique” is ridicu­lous. Why can’t one achieve the same form and tech­nique with runners?

    Hey, I’m not going to argue with you Clyn­ton but your post is very con­fus­ing. It is full of per­sonal bias, emo­tion and what seems to be an attack of a man based on an argu­ment that i just can­not read into in that email.

    I respect your com­mit­ment to achiev­ing your goal of run­ning an ultra mate and the pas­sion you have for bare­foot run­ning– but the facts are that it is tech­nique that the key not what you wear. If bare­foot helps you achieve good tech­nique then great.

    Happy trails.

  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    Its a tread mill which is not what real off road run­ning con­di­tions are like. The run­ner is also clearly over strid­ing. There is also a dif­fer­ence between heel “roll in” and heel “strike”.

    Seri­ously people.…have any of you actu­ally run a marathon or ultra never mind bare foot?

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    Now Paul, surely you’re not say­ing that only peo­ple who have run a marathon or beyond can com­ment about run­ning. The fact that you have run an ultra is great, and cool. But it only allows you to think dif­fer­ently about your­self, not oth­ers. Let’s keep it cool.

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    Yep. I agree fully. It’s a shame, because Road­Run­ner could have evolved — they had a pretty strong brand. Glad you’ve had good expe­ri­ences with run­ning bare­foot some of the time. Thanks for sharing!

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    Very well said, Dave. You’re absolutely right — the ‘band­wagon’ that folks jumped on was out of Beaver­ton in the 70’s.

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    All good points that I have expe­ri­enced as well.

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    Thanks for shar­ing the link. This is a good video. Have you seen the new ones accom­pa­ny­ing Dan Lieberman’s Har­vard research? Still get­ting through all the great data and analy­sis. http://bit.ly/9IqQXA

  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    “Dude, you have got to be kid­ding me! There’s just no way one could run the same in the huge Asics Kayanos as barefeet. Yes it was poor tech­nique — because of the shoes!”

    This is your thoughts Clyn­ton so I think its a fair ques­tion. You are rant­ing on about the ben­e­fits of what bare­foot run­ning brings so where is your per­sonal expe­ri­ences of run­ning such huge distances?

    The inter­net is great for peo­ple to express their thoughts and opin­ions but what per­sonal expe­ri­ence is this all based on? I’m not talk­ing about who can pee the fur­thest here by the way, i’m just curi­ous to why you and oth­ers think bare foot run­ning can enable such fan­tas­tic feats of distance.…and you have not done it.

  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    Who cares? It’s just an email.

  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    I don’t have any issues with bare­foot run­ning. My points are related to the email and how i can’t see a prob­lem with it. You lot just need to go run instead of wor­ry­ing about who is right and who is wrong.

  • Pingback: RunningAHEAD - Topic: Scoop: Cover of Nature on barefoot running! (page 2)

  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    Maybe some peo­ple can just run and some can­not? What about that for a concept!

    It’s great that you have had such great results, but just because you have does not mean the aver­age run­ner will. Which takes me back to my orig­i­nal com­ment that the guy is offer­ing a fairly rea­son­able alter­na­tive to just “run­ning in no shoes!”

  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    Are you now cen­sor­ing my replies Clynton?

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    Thanks for the link.

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    A reminder to all: any com­ments that are dis­re­spect­ful or spite­ful towards another poster won’t be tol­er­ated. Heated dis­cus­sions hap­pen, but it should be kept respect­ful. Dis­agree­ment healthy. Ani­mos­ity not.

  • http://www.paulpetch.com/ www.paulpetch.com

    This has clearly turned a cor­ner as per nor­mal online and i’m grace­fully bow­ing out of this dis­cus­sion. What i want to leave you all with though is a story by Matt Jenk­ins who as you will know is a leg­end ultra run­ner and marathon run­ner. In fact he has run 16 marathons in just socks and 2 ultras…

    http://runninginsocks.blogspot.com/2009/12/rocket-city-marathon.html

    The part of inter­est (aside from much pain and suf­fer­ing due to teh sur­face) is this

    “After dig­ging some glass splin­ters out of my foot the Wednes­day after the race, I dis­cov­ered that I must have stepped on and crushed part of a beer bot­tle. I was think­ing (this week) about whether or not my feet had recov­ered enough from Huntsville for a shoe­less marathon this Sat­ur­day and then another one in Mis­souri on 12/27. I dis­cov­ered a hole in my foot, and a shiny piece of glass at the bot­tom of the hole. After about an hour of scrap­ing and dig­ging, I got it out. I’m still debat­ing on whether or not to wear shoes this week­end. I’ve already decided Mis­souri has to be done with­out shoes.”

    Any­way. Happy trails.

  • http://runninginsocks.blogspot.com/ Matt

    Thanks for the link to this site, Paul. I always enjoy read­ing these types of debates. Sorry to see you leav­ing it though. Here’s my two cents about the issues.

    Run­ning with­out shoes in grass is, in my opin­ion, far more dan­ger­ous than run­ning on pavement/concrete. As Paul pointed out, I crushed a bro­ken beer bot­tle while run­ning in the grass. It’s more dif­fi­cult to actu­ally see those types of haz­ards when you’re run­ning in grass. If I was run­ning in the road and that same beer bot­tle was there, I wouldn’t have had a prob­lem. I think those types of haz­ards also tend to end up on the side of the road rather than in the road for often than not. A major prob­lem with run­ning in the grass is the fact that most peo­ple will go back to improper form, pound­ing heel first because of the cush­ion­ing grass pro­vides. Run­ning on a hard sur­face pro­vides just enough pain for me that I shorten and lighten my stride, send­ing less of a shock wave through­out my body. I have stepped on glass in the road sev­eral times, but it never gets jammed in there because of my lighter stride. Run­ning in the grass, I was pound­ing prob­a­bly twice as hard, which really attrib­uted to the prob­lem. It was a 3-day injury, and didn’t affect my marathon schedule.

    I haven’t been a big fan of the fact that the bare­foot move­ment is being seen as a way to ruin big shoe com­pa­nies. I would like to see less cost and more qual­ity (part of the rea­son I refuse to run in the $135 Vibrams, which I also believe are low qual­ity and over­priced). I was tired of pay­ing $100 or more for a pair of shoes that con­tribute to my IT band pains. Per­son­ally, I can’t afford to spend as much money as it is start­ing to cost to run all of these marathons. Part of the way I’ve dealt with that is to stop spend­ing money on shoes. This is another issue, but race fees are also out of con­trol. With the strug­gling econ­omy, race fees are going up like gas prices in some places.

    I just think run­ning should be free, or at least cheaper than it is.

  • http://www.barefootnick.com/ Nick

    “I do how­ever see the infor­ma­tion as a sen­si­ble point”

    It can only be per­ceived as such from an unin­formed indi­vid­ual.
    If you were to take your shoes off and go for a run right now, you’d come to a few con­clu­sions.
    First, you’d real­ize that you have never been pay­ing more atten­tion to where you place your feet.
    Sec­ond, if you skip the Vibrams and go purely bare­foot, you will get a blis­ter before a stress frac­ture and there­fore stop your run prior to any dam­age occurs. With the pos­si­ble excep­tion of sore calves.

    If you were to con­tinue run­ning bare­foot, then you’d come to the real­iza­tion that after some time your body becomes incred­i­bly adept at shift­ing weight as required if you were to step on some­thing painful.

    And this I think is the dan­ger with this type of mar­ket­ing. It pam­pers the unin­formed masses and cud­dles their inhibitions.

  • http://www.barefootnick.com/ Nick

    “what’s the dif­fer­ence exactly?“
    The dif­fer­ence is that when you put any­thing between your foot and the ground to lessen the feel­ing of impact (and this will hap­pen), your body com­pen­sates by land­ing harder on the ground.
    The end result is increased stress on the legs.

    I do agree that with proper form any­one can likely run in just about any­thing.
    The unfor­tu­nate part to that equa­tion is that aver­age Joe Run­ner doesn’t have good form because he was brought up run­ning in motion con­trol shoes.
    If Joe Run­ner were to ditch the shoes, learn proper form, then he very likely could go back to run­ning with what­ever he’d like on his feet.

  • http://www.barefootnick.com/ Nick

    “Maybe some peo­ple can just run and some can­not? What about that for a concept!”

    As far fetched as the con­cept that the world is flat.
    How­ever, I would cer­tainly have agreed with you at a point in my life prior to ditch­ing the shoes. In mid-May 2009 I couldn’t run 10 min­utes on a tread­mill in my shoes. I did believe I was inca­pable of run­ning. I had taken many stabs at it and always ended up a fail­ure to myself.
    I read some­thing, I think a NY Times arti­cle, around that time about how some elite run­ners use bare­foot run­ning as a method to run prop­erly. This I had never even con­sid­ered, but the logic res­onated with me and I soon tried this on the tread­mill. Sure, the first time I made it maybe a mile before blis­ters were stop­ping me. But for the first time in my life I absolutely loved run­ning. It was no longer a nasty chore I attempted because I thought I needed to be healthy.
    Since then I worked my way to my longest run in 2009 of a lit­tle over 19 miles. This was just me and myself, not a race, I did it because I couldn’t help myself.
    I have a 50 mile ultra-marathon goal in 2010 and cur­rently I can’t wait to emerge from this cold win­ter (-4F this morn­ing). While I can make it out­side in Vibrams down to about 20F I miss run­ning and espe­cially run­ning with­out Vibrams.

  • drvic­tor­jrunco

    Besides being a doc­tor that has treated run­ners and thier injuries for 11 years I also own the San Diego Run­ning Insti­tute a retail run­ning shoe store in San Diego. My first com­ment is as a doc­tor and for­mer researcher. Run­ning injuries are related to how far, how intense (hill repeats, speed work etc), how often and how much recov­ery is done btween runs. As far as I know it mat­ters not what type of shoe you are in or not in. If you run to far or to often you will even­tu­ally break down.
    My sec­ond com­ment comes as a researcher. As far as i know NO RUNNING SHOE has ever pre­vented any run­ning injury from hap­pen­ing. Even though in the run­ning com­mu­nity it is a commn belief that “more sta­bil­ity” or “more sup­port” will some­how help of pre­vet injuryit is sim­ply not true. Where did they get this idea.…probably from shoe man­u­fac­tur­ers mar­ket­ing efforts.
    Thirdly as a rnning shoe store owner and an utra­ma­rathoner i hae a sim­ple view of shoes. They should be com­fort­able and pro­vide pro­tec­tion from the ground or what­ever may be on or stick­ing out of the ground. This morn­ing my ultra­run­ning club was run­ning in Sycamore­Canyon and te topic of bare­foot run­ning was­brought up.…probably due to Mike’s email. When asked my opnin I pro­vided baically what I just said above but also this. If you want to run bare­foot do it. Do it safely and smartly. If you like it and it works for you that is awe­some. It is all about com­fort and what you like. If you feel bet­ter doing it that is great, if you don’t and want “mim­i­mal­ist” shoes I would be happy to show you some.
    For some rea­son this topic is stim­u­lat­ing emo­tional responses from “those with­out shoes” and “those with”. The bot­tom line is do what makes you happy and jus run.

  • http://www.downtown-runner.com/ Bob (Down­town Runner)

    Dr. Vic­tor,

    What do you make of the grow­ing body of research about avoid­ing heal strik­ing and the ben­e­fits (stronger feet, calves, etc.) that occur with bare­foot run­ning? And what do you think about the asser­tion that run­ning bare­foot gives the run­ner instant feed­back and there­fore “teaches” him/her the cor­rect form?

  • drvic­tor­jrunco

    Hi Bob,
    Years ago I was video­taped for 10 miles never once heel­strik­ing. I did not think it was a prob­lem then and still do not. As far as i know i have read most all of the avail­able research papers on run­ning to be pub­lished in peer reviewed med­ical joun­r­nals to date. I am not aware of “a grow­ing body of research about avoid­ing heel strik­ing and the ben­e­fits of bare­foot run­ning”. There are many who claim the ben­e­fit as there are many that claim the ben­e­fit of their sta­bil­ity shoes. Your feet have nerve recep­tors in them that pro­vide your ner­vous sys­tem with fee­back called pro­pri­o­cep­tion. This tells your body what type of sur­face you are run­ning on, how hard it is etc. If you are not wear­ing shoes then the input into your recep­tors is ampli­fied as opposed to damp­ened when wear­ing a shoe. Whether or not this results in “cor­rect’ form is debat­able. There are only a few stud­ies that have exam­ined run­ning form and it appears that our form is mod­i­fied with a few vari­ables. Age…the older we get we tend to bend our knees less and shorten our stride among other things and speed. The faster we run the more we tend to run out on the balls of our feet. When gait has been exam­ined in elite run­ners the vast major­ity are heel strik­ers and it appears with mid-foot runnners mak­ing up 20-something per­cent and toe run­ners 1–2%. Keep in mind they are all elite and there­fore fast and sucess­ful. It could be they heel strike because they were taught too, it could be that the human body chooses a form that is most effi­cient for that par­tic­u­lar per­son or maybe it is because they wear shoes.
    Cor­rect run­ning form is a dif­fi­cult con­cept. Cor­rect form in run­ning at the Pacific Beach board­walk would not be the same form I would choose while run­ning Cowles Moun­tain or run­ning through all the stream beds cur­rently flow­ing in Mis­sion Trails Park.
    I would also like to point out that there have been no stud­ies to show that a cer­tain type of form is supe­rior to any other in pre­vent­ing injuries. But also it is impor­tant to note that there are no stud­ies that show run­ning by heel­strik­ing or by wear­ing the lat­est and great­est shoe will pre­vent injury either!
    Sorry to be so long winded Bob. I guess my answer is really this, there really is no research that shows wear­ing shoes is supe­rior to bare­foot run­ning nor vice-versa. Even if bare­foot run­ning made your feet and calves stronger… is it nec­es­sary? There are plenty of strong look­ing body builder types out there who would get injured run­ning with or with­out shoes.…an increase in strength does not equate to a decrease in injury nec­es­sar­ily. As far as the increased pro­pri­o­cep­tion goes…well maybe hav­ing more input is bet­ter… but is it nec­es­sary? Base­ball play­ers wear mitts to pro­tect their hands hocky play­ers wear gloves for the same rea­son and foot­ball­ball play­ers wear hel­mets to pro­tect their heads. All of these devices are designed to pro­tect and help the ath­lete but they all also inter­fere with their pro­pri­o­cep­tion or “instant feed­back”. What is the dif­fer­ence with wear­ing shoes?
    So I say again, if you are com­fort­able and run­ning bare­foot suits you great…if you like shoes cool. Just run and be happy!

  • http://www.downtown-runner.com/ Bob (Down­town Runner)

    Thanks for the thor­ough response Doc, and for shar­ing your exper­tise. I guess time will tell what is “bet­ter” for the major­ity of peo­ple (what­ever “bet­ter” is). Of course its not gonna be a “one size fits all” sit­u­a­tion. As you say, if it works, use it. For me, its hard not to be excited about bare­foot­ing when after 34 year of run­ning with chronic pains and injuries no mat­ter what kind of footwear I tried, I have been able to be pain and injury free for about a year now run­ning exclu­sively bare­foot or in Vibrams when nec­es­sary for weather purposes.

    BTW: I was born and raised and lived the first 30 years of my life in San Diego. I lived in PB dur­ing col­lege (UCSD) and am famil­iar with Cowles Moun­tain and Mis­sion Trails. Early in my career I worked in down­town La Jolla and would run up Soledad 3–4 times a week. A far cry from my cur­rent “trails” in lower Manhattan.

    Thanks again.

  • drvic­tor­jrunco

    It seems yo uand I switched places Bob. I was born and raised in NYC! Now ilive in San Diego since 1999. When I go back to NYC I can ot find any trails. You almost have to go upstate NY to get decent trails but upstate is cetainly beautiful.…once it thaws.
    I am glad to hear you are run­ning injury free too! Maybe we will cross paths at the next NYC marathon!

  • rogerin­syd­ney

    Obvi­ously there’s a degree of self-interest in telling peo­ple that they should be buy­ing shoes, just as there’s some degree of self-interest in mak­ing sure that cus­tomers know you put them first. I think that for peo­ple who are well and truly into run­ning and do it reg­u­larly and have at least some con­tact with reli­able infor­ma­tion and good bud­dies to argue with, the lat­est hype around bare­foot is no big deal. But the trou­ble is that when detailed stud­ies get boiled down to head­lines and deliv­ered as unqual­i­fied fact to peo­ple who run casu­ally or based only on what they’re told, then there’s a risk. It’s like the Gal­loway method — yes, sure, if you can’t actu­ally run a whole marathon, then run-walk is a good way to build up. But if you actu­ally do run long dis­tances, then all run-walk offers is a stac­cato world of hurt. Yet some peo­ple swear by it because they haven’t expe­ri­enced or con­sid­ered the alter­na­tives.
    Bare­foot is at the very least a valu­able train­ing and con­di­tion­ing tool, prob­a­bly for every­body to some degree. But if it’s going to be the next rendy reli­gion, then it’s a good thing that somebody’s telling peo­ple to have a think about it. For exam­ple, the author of this arti­cle throws in a per­sonal pos­i­tive about Vibrams. That’s cool, espe­cially if peo­ple know about them. But there’s a big dif­fer­ence between wear­ing them on unciv­i­lized trails and nat­ural sur­faces that our joints evolved around as opposed to flat hard roads that really only appeared in the last few hun­dred years. I know of at least one Vibram-wearing run­ner in Syd­ney with frac­tured toes who can attest to that.
    It’s a bit of a dull way for RR to try to sure up mar­ket share, but it’s hardly ‘lash­ing out’ against a move­ment. If any­thing, it’s badly writ­ten mar­ket­ing that comes off as patro­n­is­ing, which might be why it’s pro­voked bet­ter writ­ten if sim­i­larly reac­tive responses. Per­haps sweep­ing gen­er­al­i­sa­tions about run­ning would be bet­ter pre­sented in future by say­ing, “If you actu­ally have half a clue about run­ning, please ignore the following…”

  • rogerin­syd­ney

    p.s. This has actu­ally been on my mind since New York Times first took up the bare­foot flag about 6 months ago. There was a ridicu­lous par­tial inter­view with this guy talk­ing about being a bare­foot run­ning con­vert and how he’s been run­ning city marathons bare­foot and how he runs coach­ing clin­ics to train other peo­ple want­ing to run bare­foot and long dis­tance. His marathon time was 4h45min. It doesn’t mat­ter whether you’re run­ning 2h15min or 6h15min — if you love your run­ning and your right into it and you see it through to the end of either the race or your body, that’s awe­some. But if you’re run­ning 5-hour marathons and you want to take people’s money for coach­ing, they’re saps and you’re a giant douche cash­ing in on well-meaning gulli­bil­ity, in my opinion.

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    While your point is valid — and I appre­ci­ate you being straight-forward and shar­ing your opin­ion — let’s not call any­one names here. I say that if some­one is straight up on what the payee is going to get out of the coach­ing, fine. There’s more to learn than just speed when it comes to run­ning a marathon. Now, if some­one is sign­ing up for bare­foot lessons because they read that it can increase their speed, and this coach said he could help them do that but with­held or lied about his own speed, I fully agree with you. How­ever, we don’t know if that’s the case or not here.

    A big and impor­tant point that I think is fuel­ing all of our com­ments is that no one should rush into any­thing when it includes phys­i­cal activ­ity. Do your due dili­gence and get out there and try some­thing. Just take it slowly, pause to assess how your body is, and then decide for your­self if the change is a good thing for you.

  • rogerin­syd­ney

    i kind of feel com­fort­able call­ing the occa­sional per­son a name but, just to be clear, i’m not call­ing any­body here a name — just to make sure that’s not lost in web­s­la­tion : )
    Good call –> “Do your due dili­gence and get out there and try some­thing. Just take it slowly, pause to assess how your body is, and then decide for your­self if the change is a good thing for you.”. That’s about as well as it can be said, and i think it’s a shame that this kind of sage advice is almost never attached to media buzz about the lat­est find­ing. I think we could all do a bet­ter job of decypher­ing and ques­tion­ing stud­ies. I don’t run roads or trails bare­foot because I just don’t feel the appeal, but I do a nice 10 mile train­ing run in soft sand because i feel like it really helps my ankle strangth and move­ment and release built-up junk in my legs, as well as work­ing my joints and pos­ture. I’m a fan of bare­foot as a com­po­nent of run­ning, and I admire peo­ple who do hec­tic dis­tances barely shod or unshod. I just get annoyed when the find­ings of detailed stud­ies are trum­peted by main­stream media with­out any of the caveats noted by the researchers. Aus­tralian news has been run­ning the bare­foot story over the last fort­night and all i’ve heard it say is that research has found that run­ning bare­foot is bet­ter for you than run­ning in shoes. That’s it. I can just pic­ture what hap­pens next. And it’s going to involve injuries and “but nobody told me…”. You know what I mean? Bro­ken toes might just be this generation’s Kayano. LOL.

  • http://www.downtown-runner.com/ Bob (Down­town Runner)

    I think that most of us on this thread are in “vio­lent agree­ment” and a few things:

    1) Dif­fer­ent strokes for dif­fer­ent folks.
    2) Ease into any­thing new and eval­u­ate it in light of your sit­u­a­tion.
    3) Bare­foot run­ning has at least some value.
    4) The media often gets it wrong, which can be dan­ger­ous for those who are new to running.

    Two things maybe we don’t quite agree:

    1) The orig­i­nal post was about whether the email from RRS was at least a lit­tle bit self serv­ing (and maybe a lot self serv­ing) and not alto­gether altruistic.

    2) Just because some­one isn’t great at some­thing doesn’t mean they can’t teach it. Peo­ple that teach pro­gram­ming give their stu­dents the tools. That doesn’t mean they’ve writ­ten code that is the best out there. Most peo­ple who teach word pro­cess­ing or Eng­lish have never writ­ten a novel, let alone a suc­cess­ful one. Some of my best teach­ers have been peo­ple that never worked in the fields they taught.

    How­ever, this whole thread has been very inter­est­ing, mostly calm and civil, and I think good for all of us.

  • rogerin­syd­ney

    that’s a webal­ized mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion then — I totally agree the mailout is self-serving. The absolute give­away is that he tries to scare peo­ple about glass at the beach. The beach is about the one place you actu­ally want to run across glass if you’re going to because it sinks into loose sand more eas­ily than into skin. I think that good run­ning shops are altru­is­ti­cally self-interested — they know it’s bet­ter to have cus­tomers return because their needs are looked after and their hori­zons expanded, rather than because they have been scared into buy­ing cr@p they don’t nec­es­sar­ily need. I wouldn’t put this dude in the Darth Vader bas­ket, but he’s def­i­nitely some kind of doofus.

    So worth­less though it may be to know, I’m mostly agree­ing with you. And I like your anal­ogy about teach­ers deliv­er­ing tools and build­ing blocks but you could coat the 5-hour marathon coach with banana and peanut but­ter and try to wash it down with frosty cola and i still couldn’t swal­low it. See your 1.) i guess. :-)

  • AQ

    Can I just say that this has been the most inter­est­ing and use­ful thread on this sub­ject that I have read any­where? Now that the con­ver­sa­tion has died down a bit and needs to get stirred up again, I’ll jump in…

    First, I am with Roger in say­ing the idea of not need­ing to know a sub­ject to teach it sounds totally bonkers to me. Would you really hunt out the guy on the court who was miss­ing 9 out of 10 free throws and ask him to teach you about hoops? I have been study­ing Ger­man for almost a year, and while I could func­tion at a basic level in Ger­many, I’d think you were nuts if you asked me to teach you, let alone if you offered to pay me. What’s more, my lack of knowl­edge of advanced Ger­man would prob­a­bly cause me to lead you astray even about the things that I think I know.

    The speed at which we run a race (any race—100 miles or 100 meters) mea­sures our knowl­edge of run­ning. I think that’s why most of us bother to race at all—to mea­sure how much we’ve learned and improved since the last time. It cer­tainly mea­sures other things (your ded­i­ca­tion to the sport, the amount of free time you’ve had in the pre­ced­ing weeks to train, etc), but pri­mar­ily it demon­strates how well you under­stand run­ning (how to train, how to hydrate, how to approach the race itself, etc). As Roger said, there is noth­ing wrong with run­ning a 5 hour marathon, just like there is noth­ing wrong with hit­ting 1 out of 10 free throws, as long as you are enjoy­ing what you’re doing. How­ever, run­ning a marathon at that pace doesn’t indi­cate any deep under­stand­ing of the sport (with the obvi­ous excep­tions, such as if the run­ner was older). A run­ner who is at the very begin­ning stages of learn­ing the sport might be some­one you would want to swap thoughts with if you were both at that level, but tak­ing lessons from him could lead to real prob­lems. A lit­tle knowl­edge can be a dan­ger­ous thing.

    My sec­ond thought, and I real­ize that this is provoca­tive before I even say it, is that I am not con­vinced that bare­foot run­ning is a means to an end. Par­tic­u­larly to the end of healthy run­ning. Bare­foot run­ning is not a panacea–running bare­foot exposes you to injury just like any phys­i­cal activ­ity does. Cer­tainly the kinds of injuries you encounter might be dif­fer­ent than those when wear­ing shoes, but as Dr. Vic­tor points out, we just don’t have a large enough body of sci­ence to know whether it will decrease the rate of injury. The Sap­poro Half Marathon study that he cited sug­gests to me that it is over­strid­ing and inef­fi­cient form that causes prob­lems rather than shoes or the way the foot lands—as run­ners get bet­ter at run­ning, they tend to develop a more effi­cient (i.e. faster and less injury prone) form whether they are wear­ing shoes or not. I think what Paul called some­thing like “heel roll in” is a very dif­fer­ent thing from “heel strike”, and my guess is that these Sap­poro study run­ners were doing some­thing like roll in, although the study didn’t specif­i­cally make the dis­tinc­tion between the two.

    I have recently been log­ging all of my miles bare­foot and will con­tinue to do so, but I do it sim­ply because I enjoy it. In other words, it is an end in and of itself. In my mind, that is the only rea­son to do it. It doesn’t par­tic­u­larly make me a bet­ter run­ner (I cer­tainly would never race bare­foot), and I am very sure that I will get run­ning injuries in the future regard­less of how I run.

  • http://naturallyengineered.com/blog/ Dave C.

    One of the things I find funny about the larger dia­logue of bare­foot vs shoe, is that for a lot of peo­ple — they are bas­ing their under­stand­ing of the topic and its argu­ments from a level of anec­do­tal and per­sonal expe­ri­ence. Unfor­tu­nately, most people’s per­sonal expe­ri­ence in run­ning does not expand to a time prior to the advent of mod­ern run­ning shoes and sneak­ers, much less liv­ing a life pri­mar­ily with­out shoes.

    One per­son will say, “humans have been run­ning with­out shoes for a mil­lion years.“
    And the other will reply, “but what about glass and rocks?!!?!”

    I think it is going to take more and more sci­en­tific stud­ies, and mass media expo­sure for peo­ple to stop think­ing about their learned behav­iors from a life­time of wear­ing shoes, and start thing about what sci­ence and evi­dence is actu­ally say­ing about the human body and how it was meant to move.

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