dminor 

Man, way to go, santiago. That's some good mileage (kilometerage?) you're getting in there.

sscyco

OK - I just finished reading chapter 25 in "Born to Run" by Chritopher McDougall. I would say, if you have any thoughts or interest in minimal or bare foot running - then this book (chapter) is a must read.

After reading this this, I mentally reviewed my running history (which is relatively short) and matched it with my running injury's:

2004 - started running seriously after I signed up for the 2005 CDA IM. My first shoes were asic DS trainers - which I ran in for over 1 year and did little rotation with other shoes. Completed my first half marathon 8 weeks after I started running, @1:30. No injuries.
2005 - added Asic Kayanos to my stable of now 2 pairs of shoes. Averaged about 35 miles per week. Sub 4 hour marathon during the CDA IM. Several running races. No injuries.
2006 - Added another pair of Kayanos, tossed my worn out DS trainers. Several running races. No injuries.
2007 - Added 2 more pair of Kayanos - started paying attention to the miles on my shoes - running partner advised no more than 300-500 miles per pair, I took that as gospel. 4 Hour marathon during the CDA IM. Several running races. Achilles inflammation caused several missed weeks of running during the second half of the year.
2008 - 2009 - Another pair of Kayanos, several running races. Many missed runs from sore feet and knees. These 2 years were plagued with several minor, annoying injuries.
2010 - Most pain yet, with least amount of mileage. Saw a couple doctors - found a stress fracture and a couple other things they could not explain - they suggested orthopedics and new shoes. Missed about 6 months of running. No races. Late in the year I stopped going to the doctor (no improvement) and started fixing me myself. Mainly focusing on running form.
2011 - (late 2010) Went back to a light shoe - Saucony Kinvara , and running in my oldest, highest mileage Kayanos. Mileage and speed is up and my feet feel great.

Looks like I will experimenting more with the minimal thing.

mx_599

another benefit of 5 finger footwear is the toe spread they offer.

truly, no closed shoe can offer this if you believe it to be a benefit. I will leave that up to your own research. But keep "toe spread" in the back of your mind as you look into things.
the only alternative is barefoot or sandle/huarache footwear. any time you have a shoebox it goes without saying that your toes will be squished a little or a lot....depending.

Five Fingers act as toe separators as well for good foot health. This was just a benefit that came to thought over any other minimalist footwear product available.


also, Born to Run barely scratches the surface of what you can look up on this stuff. I believe a follow-up book and movie is in the works...not quite sure on the movie, maybe like documentary.

take care!

mx

mx_599

thanks for your thoughtful post. nope, not nearly the experience you have of competing over the years.

I have given considerable thought to shoes and orthotics, about 18+ years worth of thought. Maybe 25+ years if you count the times I was thinking about the awesome treads, Air Jordans, and Reebok pumps!

I have exhaustively been researching this stuff for the past year now. I feel far more informed than I ever had been. Probably why I have not been on this forum as much...been hangin' with the Nutters on the minimalist forums! (oh, and the Subaru forums)

Actually, more work related than anything. Hopefully I could provide some more insightful mtn bike posting soon!

mx

dminor 

^^ You mean you should have insight before posting on MTBs?

Zephyr11

Crap! Please disregard all of my mountain biking advice!

electrik

I don't know why i'm posting to a bunch of degenerate chimps who insist on running around on the forest floor when they can ride a perfectly good mountain bike, but... some of you are off the mark according to this guy

mx_599

He didn't really have much to say. He did not address barefoot/minimalist. His comfort mantra is off too. A high heel might be comfortable, doesn't mean it is healthy for body.

I was out of town so I bought my second pair of 5fingers!! Did some running in wasatch mtns

electrik

Well, i don't think he was speaking about high heels. His main point was that cost and gadgetry has had almost no effect on running injuries, maybe that wasn't new to you, but somebody was comparing expensive running shoes to expensive bicycles and stating you get what you pay for - apparently not true.

santiago

Actually there have been studies that show the more expensive the shoe (more gadgets), the higher the injury rate. There are studies quoted in the Born to Run book that show this and prior to reading the book I had read about these studies.

It also seems that the author is speaking from experience and not an actual study (not sure as i didn't read his book).

A quick google found the following, including references to Born to Run and the studies referenced in that book. There are actual statistics quoted here (increase in tendon injuries over the last 30 years have increased 10%).
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/mosl...ste-money.html

Here's a quote, "Runners wearing top-of-the-line trainers are 123 per cent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap ones. This was discovered as far back as 1989, according to a study led by Dr Bernard Marti, the leading preventative-medicine specialist at Switzerland's University of Bern. "

Zephyr11

There are a couple problems with studies like that. First of all, runners doing hard training are more likely to be wearing top of the line trainers than cheap shoes. Someone doing triple digit mileage and speedwork every week isn't going to buy cheap shoes. With quality and quantity also comes an increased risk of injury. The majority of runners doing hard training are wearing real shoes (in my experience at least). They'll do a little bit of form drills barefoot, and will usually do some of their speedwork in spikes or flats, but the bulk of their training is done shod in real trainers (That article leave out the crucial detail that Lananna's runners only do a part of their training barefoot. In fact, I believe Lananna's current star, Jordan Hasay, wears a heavy support shoe, the Nike Equalon). Even Anton Krupicka, who wears less shoe, isn't really doing speedwork. He's running 150 miles per week, but so are the men on the Hansons Project, only the Hansons runners do speedwork 2-3 times per week too. I can do back to back to back triple digit mileage weeks easy. I have never gotten hurt running easy mileage. It's when I add speedwork that things start to get dicey. It's kind of like saying that mountain bikers wearing platform pedals get hurt more than mountain bikers wearing clipless. Alright, well maybe that's true, but are the platform guys dirt jumping and downhilling while the clipless riders are doing non-technical XC? That's a small percentage of runners when you talk about hard quality training though, and I'd venture a guess that the majority of these statistics are related to what I'll discuss next.

I wouldn't be surprised if the incidence of injury has risen in recent years. However, I'd attribute that at least in part to the rise in popularity of running. Running before and during the first running boom (1970's) was self-selective. The only guys who *could* be good were the ones with good biomechanics. No one else's body was physically capable of doing the kind of training required to get good. With better shoe technology, the sport opened to the people with less than ideal biomechanics. Also, with the advent of plans like Couch to 5K, Gallowalking, and the less is more philosophy, we're seeing more and more recreational runners. The majority of the running growth in the past couple years has been at the back 1/3 of the pack. It used to be that the majority of the field was competitive. You put in the miles, or you didn't run (with the exception of Sir Roger Bannister, who was mentioned in the article, who was a freak of nature who ran very low mileage yet still went sub-4 in the mile!). And you didn't attempt a marathon until you had adequate experience and a darn good mileage base. Now we have people with 2 years of experience running marathons off 40 and 50 miles per week, where their long run in half their weekly mileage (15-20% is considered ideal), and they're spending 5 hours out on the course. That's pretty much asking for trouble. It's great that more people are getting involved with running, but not everyone's body is capable of putting in the ideal amount of training for a marathon.

In response to the article about buying which shoes are comfortable, it is most likely referring to someone trying on a motion control shoe vs a neutral shoe. A neutral runner will most likely find the neutral shoe more comfortable, since the motion control shoe will feel unnatural, and vice versa for an overpronator. Also, when it says that the high tech gadgetry may not be necessary, it's referring to some of the crazy stuff that's put in the high end ($130+) shoe market. The $130 Brooks Glycerin isn't necessarily a better shoe than the $100 Brooks Defyance, though for some people, it may work better. It is not comparing cheap $40 Walmart shoes to a real pair of running shoes. There's a big difference in material and construction there. Think of the Glycerin as a titanium high end bike, the Defyance as an aluminum high end bike, and the Walmart shoe as a hi-ten Walmart bike. For many people, they'll be just as good on the aluminum bike as the titanium bike, and should buy whichever one is more comfortable, ignoring which one has DW-Link vs single pivot. However, most people won't be happy on the Walmart bike, because it's not constructed well.

For every study that says running shoes are bad, there's another one that says they're good. Keep in mind that no one article can stand alone. Not one saying that running shoes are bad, not one saying they're good, and not one saying just to buy according to comfort, especially since most articles tend to be biased one way or the other, and tend to conveniently leave out details.

electrik

Well, one may be purchasing expensive runners to solve a problem which exists already... so i hope they isolated that.

I don't think this closes the book.. but because the running injury rates have remained unaffected to date, the evidence seem to not support "expensive" shoes as the option to.

Of course walmart shoes won't last as long, but they may not, by deliberate design, misalign your ankles or whatever. Dr. Nigg also seems to support cheap minimalist/barefoot shoes, so long as they are comfortable. Why might this work? Because as i see it, a minimalist shoe, it really only need be comfortably fitting and protect the sole from glass and rocks - your foot does the rest. Hard to justify the extra dough on extra features for something which by functional purpose is supposed to be simple.

santiago

I doubt it's to solve a problem. Upgrade-itis exists in the running world, too. The fact is that the range from inexpensive to high-end falls within a very tight range compared to cycling. So if you are of average means splurging an extra $50 for shoes is a far cry than the range we are used to for cycling.

Zephyr11

When Mark Wetmore, the coach at the University of Colorado, was younger and logging tons of miles, he decided that he might be able to get 100 miles out of a $7 pair of Kmart shoes, bringing him to $70 for 1000 miles, instead of $75 for a good pair of shoes that would last 300-500 miles. He bought a pair of $7 shoes, and 6 miles into his first run, the glue dissolved in the rain and the shoes fell apart.

Seriously though, I'd assume that today, they'd be made a little bit better. And I agree, there's a good chance that they don't really have any support features built in, so they won't mess up the stride of an efficient runner with good biomechanics. An overpronator or supinator would have trouble in them since they lack support or cushioning, but for now, we'll focus on the efficient neutral runner. One thing to consider would be weight. In general, Walmart shoes will be heavier than a true running shoe, since the materials are of a lower quality and less engineering went into the design to minimize weight. They may not breathe as well either, which is no fun when your feet get wet (whether from water or sweat). The upper and last may be poorly designed, which will affect the fit of the shoe (though it can be argued that someone will find that it fits better than other shoes). I have heard of some diehard minimalists running in Walmart water shoes, but I have yet to meet one who logs over 50 miles per week (doesn't mean they don't exist, of course, but if they do, I'd wager a guess that they're very few and far between). As a neutral runner who logs a lot of road miles, I'd argue that I like cushioning, but YMMV. I've also done a few blind tests run by shoe companies, and I usually end up defaulting to the same couple models. That's what's comfortable, and coincidentally, that's what works for me. The article you posted said that the shoe that's the most comfortable is the one that will likely work for you. Having worn Walmart shoes in the past (not for actual sports, but I admit that I've bought them a few times for walking around), I'd be very surprised to find more than a handful of people who could honestly say they're more comfortable than a technical running shoe.

Zephyr11

It's usually with gear though. The latest GPS watch, the cool new jacket, the geeky socks that we saw Chris Solinsky wear that we're convinced will help us recover faster. It sometimes happens with spikes and flats when a new model of our favorite flat comes out, or when a steeplechaser moves to the 10K, or when a college runner graduates and decides to start marathoning and needs marathon flats. It rarely happens with trainers. Most runners stick to what works, buying the same model of shoes year after year and grumbling when companies update them. At least that's what pretty much my entire college team did...most of them wore the same shoes through 4 years of college, which was also what they wore in high school, and for the ones still running, what they're still wearing now.

electrik

I don't think he means shoddy Kmart bargain shoes though... or high heels... two sorts of extremes. I wouldn't drag durability into this trying to justify the expensive runners since he was only trying to debunk the claims about injury prevention. What the author seems to say is that expensive shoe "technology" which claims to reduce injury didn't and doesn't live up to it's marketing. What is up with that? You're probably better off buying something comfortable it seems.

samburger

santiago

You're talking about the enlightened and experienced bunch. You've noted already that the surge in runners has been with the recreational runners and I believe when these people walk into their local Foot Locker they'll see the $79, $99, and $129 model and opt for the $129 model without truly knowing why they're getting it. It costs more, it must be better.

santiago

For the cold-weather 5-finger freaks.

electrik

Samsquantch shoes!

samburger

The new Uggs.

mx_599

good point! sort of missed that. was driving utah to south dakota.

well the high heel thing was to show a point, but remember any heel rise is probably not good. so you're a biker right? you know how much small differences make in bike set-ups, right? especially the ergonomics on a road bike. if someone messed with your bike seat a few mm or handlebars or stem length, etc don't you think you'd notice? with thousands of pedal stokes a messed up seat height or angle certainly transmits to the body, right?

so, if you are to believe a heel rise is bad, well...see above. doesn't matter if it is a 3 inch heel or a 8mm rise to the heel. after thousands of foot strikes, or a lifetime for that matter, don't you think it could affect the joints of the body? the ankles, the knees, the hips, the pelvis, the back, the neck.

there is in fact a study in the PM&R journal that speaks to the changes of torque on joints due to foot wear. you can find it on pub med or where ever.

thanks!

mx

mx_599

anton has been known to shave the bottom of his shoes off.

it's not really possible to twist your foot barefoot/minimal/5fingers. you should try it! sweet for not getting rolling injuries to the foot/ankle.

mx_599

do believe that much of a persons foot shape/arch is determined as a child? (there is a study for this too, d'oute or something like that)

do you believe a foot shape/arch can change later in life?

electrik

I don't really have an opinion on heel rise. High-heels just seemed a strange choice to run in, most of the women I know complain about them after spending a few hours. I usually use quick-release seats and platforms so i'm not counting mm a lot of the time Having said that, if i spend time on the road machine(seated) I will stop to adjust the seat-height by a few mm. If the seat-post was out over an inch sore knees maybe arise quickly than if it was out 5mm... 5mm is like wearing the warm socks.. it takes a while to notice 5mm difference.