Discipline

It’s still very hard to run so slowly.  True, I do get a smattering of fast(ish) interval runs, and Thanksgiving happened to coincide with the first tempo run on my training schedule.  It felt good to run fast for a change.

Still, many of my runs are still “A” runs, which means a maximum heart rate of 70% of maximum -- to wit, 140 bpm.  Especially running on Greenville hills, this can be an excruciatingly slow run.  So, I want to run faster.  Also, there are many running plans that would have me running faster.  I wouldn’t have to look too long or hard to find an 18-week training program that would allow me to run faster every day.

And so, my eyes wander.  I start wondering why I’m on the particular program that I am.  Does any other program at all indicate that I should run so slowly?

In short: yes.  In addition to the program that I am following as prepared by Coach Benson and Dr. Connolly, one of the other leading authors in the field recommends that, indeed, I need to be running just so slowly.  If I understand correctly, Dr. Philip Maffetone, author of The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing and other works, would have me basically never run at a higher heart rate than 180 - age.  So, Dr. Maffetone would have me under 142 bpm throughout my training (under 141 in a couple short months).  I’ve purchased his book and will look to it for reinforcement of the plan I’ve already undertaken.

Meanwhile, my moderate “B” runs are getting much more enjoyable.  “B” runs are my long runs that hold me to a top heart rate of 75% of max, or 150 bpm.  This used to be agonizingly slow to me.  And really, it is a frustrating struggle to fight with my heart rate monitor for an hour and a half, running right at the top edge of the range -- basically, being told to slow down for a whole run.  For my last couple “B” runs, however, I’ve tried to target 72% or 73% for the duration.  That way, if I lose control and start to run too fast, I have a little free reign before the punishment inflicted by the heart rate monitor ensues (beeping).  I find myself glad to run at these lower rates with the added freedom of not walking a tightrope for the whole run.  Ahh, I think I am on to something, indeed…

Yes, it’s still slow.  If I were to take my average pace from yesterday and figure my marathon time from that, it would put me basically right at a six hour marathon. 

But alas, most training programs do not even run this long.  It’s almost as if I haven’t even begun training yet under most systems.  And yet benefits have already been conferred.  True, my pace isn’t quite what I’d like it to be -- but my primary goal is to finish the marathon, not win it.  I’m learning the discipline that it takes to run all day. 

Man, I love running.

Doubt

Perhaps those of you who read Friday’s blog entry saw this coming.  This last weekend, I met with my first serious doubts about my goal of running a marathon in March.

As I mentioned on Friday, it’s not that I don’t think that I’ll be able to finish my 26.2 mile run.  Perhaps I do have some fear along these lines, but in any event, I won’t really be able to face and battle these fears until race day.  Meanwhile, I’m learning what I need to know about nutrition and pacing, and I am training my body to be able to complete the run.  I have no illusions about being the first one to the finish line.  But I think I am realistic in my expectation that, if I keep up my training and keep learning, that I’ll be able to run the race to its completion. 

No, it’s all that I might feel that I’m giving up along the way that weighed on me this weekend.  It’s all the extra responsibility that I feel I am putting on Julie to single-handedly parent the kids, especially on Shabbat.  So, I started thinking: If I changed my goal to do the marathon in Greenville next October, that would put the heavy training during the summer.  And in summer, the whole family can go out together; Julie can bike & pull the kids in a trailer while I run.  Or she can head out with me and play with the kids on a beautiful summer morning under the sun while I run, as opposed to being stuck in a house for hours every Shabbat throughout the winter.  And then, when busy season comes along, I could be in a lighter training cycle rather than overlapping my busiest time of year at work with some of my longest runs.  Really, one might say, I didn’t think things through very well before I signed up for this marathon.  It really could be timed out a lot better for October.  So, maybe I could call the marathon folks & tell them to change my registration to be for the half?  That way I could also make the most out of money already committed to this process.

I shared my misgivings with Julie after my run on Saturday.  We talked it through & I think that I had nearly sold her on the change of course.  But, I guess after thinking about our conversation as she showered, she came back to me and encouraged me to stay the course.  No matter what, she said, we would be running and biking and playing on Saturdays during the summer.  Wouldn’t it be nice (she didn’t say, but I inferred) if we could just enjoy each other in doing so instead on needing to stick to a programmed duration or distance?  I’ve come this far, and even if I were to change gears to aim for an October marathon, that’s really not going to change much about my daily or weekly runs.  How about, Julie suggested, I do my long runs on Sunday instead of Saturday for a while?

I won’t need to work on Sundays until February, and even then, Sundays tend to be short working days for me until mid-March.  The marathon is March 10^th.  When I was originally setting myself up on my marathon schedule, I was envisioning the worst cases: the three-hour run two weeks prior to the marathon and the other couple long runs right near the end. 

But, suggested Julie: Isn’t there some room for flexibility?  I mean, sure, there’s one long run a week, and it makes sense for it to be on Saturday or Sunday.  And it would probably be hard to just wing it week to week, since the days before & after the long run of the week are in anticipation of and recovery from the long run, respectively.  But what about planning on running on Sundays in November & December, at least?

Boy-o, does it ever pay to have a smart & loving wife!

My doubts have been allayed.  My verve has been renewed.  

Real Endurance

There are several types of endurance necessary to run in a marathon.

The most obvious is the endurance that it takes to run 26.2 miles without stopping.  There is no question in embarking upon marathon training that, if all goes as planned, your endurance will be put to the test on race day. 

But there’s only one race day.  Well, okay -- there’ll probably be more than one.  The point is that even though the training is about race day, the training process is a much larger commitment.  Even if the marathon itself turns out to be a miserable few hours, it is, alas, only a few hours.

The real test of endurance is the training that is necessary to take that few hours seriously.

I heard a Rabbi teach last week about Abraham.  Abraham endured a number of tests that demonstrated his commitment to G-d.  One of the first tests that Abraham (then Abram) was put to was when G-d commanded him to leave his homeland and set out for an unknown destination.  A later test (as related by the sages of the Talmud) involved Abraham’s angering Nimrod, the king of the land.  According to the story, Nimrod had Abraham thrown into a firey furnace.  Abraham trusted in G-d and came out of the furnace unscathed.  The result of this victory was the conversion of many souls from idolatry to monotheistic worship of Adonai.

The Rabbi’s point, however, was that the test of setting out from his homeland was a much more difficult test than being willingly thrown into a furnace.  After all, the firey furnace, regardless of the specific outcome, would only really be a test on one day.  Setting out from his home, on the other hand, was a test without an end in sight.  While the fire might take his life, the journey would certainly take Abraham’s comfort, being a man of great wealth even at the outset of his journey.

This lesson resonates with me.  It’s one thing to take a few hours and run.  Really, I’d love to do this.  But while I understand that the marathon will indeed be hard, it doesn’t compare to the difficulty of the training.  The hardest part is being away from my family for a good chunk of time on Shabbat.  Tomorrow I will be out of the house for 2.5 hours while the rest of my family remains at home.  Instead of being a relaxing time of rest for Julie, it brings the burden of being the sole caregiver for two young children who each demand quite a bit.  To that extent, it is not even my time that I am sacrificing, but that of my wife.  And believe me, that’s even harder.

October 25^th is National Married-to-a-Runner Appreciation Day.  It is the brainchild of one of the editors of Runner’s World.  I found out about it, alas, on October 26^th this year.  Even though it was a day too late, it seems that honoring your spouse for all they give up to allow you to follow your passion can never go out of style.  Excuse me, please, while I run off to the store to get some flowers on my way home.

Shabbat shalom!

Mr. Upside-Downsky

First, allow me to get the preliminaries out of the way.  My time in the 5k last Saturday was 30:49.  It was a bit over my goal time, but it was a good learning experience.  Unfortunately, the main takeaway is pretty 5k-specific.  The best lesson I learned was how packed the field is for the first half mile.  Starting out in the middle of the pack, there was very little way for me to run my desired pace for at least that long.  Having this knowledge could well have made the difference between beating 30 minutes and falling short of it -- but what’s a minute difference in a marathon to me?  On the other hand, having a 5k time under my belt does allow me to estimate my marathon time.  I had been thinking that I’d be lucky to beat the maximum course time of 6 hours by too much, so 5:30 had been my out-of-thin-air goal time.  With a 5k time of 30:49, using the formula T2 = T1 x (D2/D1)^1.06, my marathon time is estimated to be 4:55.  If I further assume that I lost time procedurally and that 30 minutes is actually a realistic 5k time, then my estimated time for a marathon would be 4:47.  Since there will undoubtedly be some procedural time lost at marathon as well, however, it probably makes sense for me to stick with the 5 hour pace group based on my 5k performance.

What I really want to share with you today is some of what I’ve learned from my recent foray into sports nutrition.

Just as with my learning about the proper way to train to run, most everything that I’ve learned about nutrition over the last couple weeks has been counterintuitive.  As long as I’ve been in the habit of exercising, I’ve been good about bringing water along with me and staying hydrated throughout a workout.  “Sure, I understand that sports drinks replenish electrolytes that are lost during workouts.  But, really, I have plenty of salt in my diet.  Why should I add more through a drink?  And even if there are other electrolytes that I might need to replenish after a particularly hard workout, there’s no reason to add all of the calories of a normal sugary Gatorade, right?  That just kind of defeats one of the purposes of working out to begin with, which is to burn more calories than I’m consuming.  And I’m totally not hungry after a run.  I might as well use that to my advantage, too, and wait to eat until I actually feel like eating.”  Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again.

Now that I’m learning about sports nutrition, I’m well aware that I had many things totally wrong.  What I’ve learned is that I need sugar calories before a run, absolutely need more sugar calories after a run, and really should be downing sugar during the run as well.  When all’s said and done, even on my light run days, I need to consume about 80 grams of high-glycemic-index carbs before my workout is complete.  Yep, that’s 320 calories that, I now understand, are absolutely essential to add to my workout.  And that’s for my easy runs -- the ones that I complain about being frustratingly slow.  And, the more I read, the more I am assured that this isn’t fringe advice.  This is well-accepted contemporary nutritional science.  Obviously the folks over at Gatorade know this stuff all too well.  If you’ve made a purchase of Gatorade lately, you’ll have noticed that there isn’t really just a good ol’ “Gatorade” product anymore.  There is one product that is suitable to ingest before a workout, another one to drink while you’re working out, and another for the recovery period. 

Granted, I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of this newfound (or newfound-to-me) information.  But as with a lot of my training, it’s been a matter of act first, understand second.  I can snub my nose at the information, say, “well, that doesn’t sound right at all; I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing,” and get nowhere just as fast as I have been getting for the last ten years -- or I can change my habits.  Indeed, the pre-workout Gatorade is really pretty gross, especially first thing in the morning.  It’s like drinking syrup.  No, not “like” -- it is drinking syrup.  And I still don’t have any desire to eat right after running.  Furthermore, it’s highly inconvenient.  When I get home, I want to shower & get to work.  But now, I’m taking a little extra time to have some sports drink, eat a banana, and drink some of Josiah’s chocolate milk.  Yes, all three. 

Such is a life of faith.  Not everything makes sense.  Not everything feels “natural.”  But you decide to do it because you trust something or someone more than you trust your instincts.  Some people are comfortable calling this a “leap of faith” a la Kierkegaard.  Really, it is entirely rational.  Why on earth would I think I know better than a nutritionist how I should be eating?  I’ve been trusting myself for a long time & it’s gotten me. . . not very far.  So how do you take it to the next level?  It’s got to be through trust and faith. 

I’m not obese or incredibly out of shape.  But if I want to get in better shape, I have to trust a nutritionist.  I wasn’t particularly unhappy or despairing before I became religious.  But I guess I wanted to be more fulfilled.  I wanted there to be something or someone greater than me.  I wanted there to be a G-d.   And you know what?  He’s not hard to find.  Countless smart, wise people have come before me & known him by name.  Maybe I can trust one of them.  Maybe I can humble myself long enough to believe that I’m not the smartest, wisest being that’s ever walked the face of the earth.  Does that really take a leap?  Does it even really take humility?

Three Days Before Race #1

My first race is in three days.  As of today, however, I still have not resolved my heart rate monitor issue.

If you read my last post, you know that the reading on my HRM was regularly spiking.  I thought that the culprit was either an expiring battery or some kind of interference from my new running jacket.  It was easy enough to put both of these theories to the test.  A fresh battery & running without my jacket still gave me conclusive evidence: something else was wrong with my equipment. 

Coach Benson, the author of the book I am using for training, has a section in his book describing various things that can cause the heart rate monitor to malfunction.  One of the things he mentions is that a loose chest strap can result in just such errant readings.  After reading this, I was sure that I had found the solution to my problem.  I tightened the strap, put on my heart rate monitor, and observed the readout as I sat and read on Saturday afternoon.  No spikes.  Problem solved, right? 

Of course not.  The next morning as I took to the road, things started off looking right (as they always do).  But after running for a while, my HRM reported my heart rate at 210 BPM.  I can get my heart rate pretty close to that and I know what it feels like.  No way was my heart beating that fast.  I was probably right around 150 BPM, a far cry from over 200.  The continuing errors on my device led me to do more research on possible problems.  As it turned out, my hunches were right in terms of my problem-solving efforts.  Weak battery & some types of clothing can indeed have such result.  But the other thing I found out is that a lot of people have had just such a problem -- that the chest strap (and indeed all Garmin chest straps, apparently) has a bad habit of showing heart rate spikes after about six months of use.

I’ve ordered a new chest strap and contacted Garmin customer support.  Hopefully they will replace the faulty one and I can have a spare strap going forward.  The heart rate monitor is too central to my training to go without.

On the other hand, the last week of running has been uniquely rewarding.  Since my heart rate monitor has shown itself to be an unreliable tool, I am willing to ignore whatever it tells me.  So, I’ve been running with fewer constraints.  Generally, my runs are keyed to a heart rate range, and I spend my whole run fighting to keep within the range.  If my run is supposed to be a 60% - 75% run, I spend the whole time at 75% - 76%.  I always want to run faster than my workout will allow.  Being able to ignore the beeping of my device has been quite liberating.  I still try to follow the spirit of the session -- i.e. in the 65% - 70% sessions, I know the whole point of the exercise is to hold back -- but now I’m holding back on my terms.

Unfortunately, I fear that this will delay my progress somewhat.  I’ve been running “how I want” for a couple years now with basically no progress.  The whole point in following Coach Benson’s model workout program is that it will allow me to develop as a runner.  Running slow is in unsatisfying in some ways.  However, there is satisfaction to be found in achieving a goal.  My goal is to run a marathon.  Lest I forget.  Also, I want to develop into a better runner.

This weekend is the first test.  It’s a little premature.  On Coach Benson’s schedule, the 5k doesn’t come until the end of week six, and I am only on week four at this point.  Also, I don’t really have an empirical benchmark to demonstrate development.  In any event, I’m psyched that, for the first time since I started this training: I get to run!  The faster, the better!  Race day!

My goal has been to do a 5k in 30 minutes.  I have a hunch that I might be able to do even better than that, though, so I’m setting up my splits so that my Garmin will be encouraging me to finish in 26 minutes.

It’ll be the first time that the Garmin will be telling me to speed up rather than slow down.

Tools for Knowing the Heart

I got a bit of a scare this morning.  After strapping on my heart rate monitor, I headed down the road to leave the neighborhood.  By the time I had gone a tenth of a mile, during my warm-up stage, my heart rate monitor read “80%.”  Now, I’ve been using this thing long enough to know that I was not running in any way at an intensity that would have read 80% any other day.  I was just warming up; if I had to guess, I think it would have read around 65% any other day.

What made this day unlike all other days?

There are three possible culprits in the wild reading on my heart rate monitor today.  First, today was the first time I ran with my new running jacket, a Patagonia Runshade 1/4 Zip.  It would be unfortunate if the jacket is interfering with my heart rate monitor, since I like the jacket a lot -- but this is a likely cause. My hope is that the error was due to a failing battery in the chest strap.  The battery is easy to replace and would require no further change of gear or routine.

The third and worst case scenario for the cause of the error is that I had the wrong resting heart rate programmed into my heart rate monitor.  The Garmin (HRM) wants to show zones as percentages of the differential between maximum heart rate and resting heart rate, while Coach Benson expresses all of his zones simply as percentages of maximum.  In my case, my maximum heart rate is 200 and my resting heart rate is 50.  If I put both of these numbers into my Garmin, it will tell me I’m at 70% when my heart rate is (((200 - 50) * 70%) + 50) = 155, while my training program would mean 70% as (200 * 70%) = 140.  To get my Garmin to read in Coach Benson’s terms, I set resting heart rate to “1.”  Therefore the differential is essentially the same as actual maximum heart rate.  I’m sure that I’ve set my device accordingly in the past.  But yesterday I noticed that the value for resting heart rate in the computer software related to my Garmin was set at 55 or something.  I changed it so that the charts would read the way I want them to.  But the question remains: Was my device also set to RHR = 55 over the past few weeks?  If so, I’ve been going too fast all along -- even as I’ve experienced my running as, at times, maddeningly slow.

Notice how I’m not concerned that my heart was different today than yesterday.  I am confident that there is, for some reason, an error in my tools or their use.  My heart is as good as it has ever been.

Thinking about this leads me to ponder the words of Jeremiah in scripture: “The days are coming, says the L-rd, when I shall establish a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah.  It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, a covenant I broke, though I was patient with them, says the L-rd.  For this is the covenant I shall establish with the Israelites after those days, says the L-rd: I shall set my law within them, writing it on their hearts; I shall be their G-d, and they will be my people.  No longer need they teach one another, neighbor or brother, to know the L-rd; all of them, high and low alike, will know me, says the L-rd, for I shall forgive their wrongdoing, and their sins I shall call to mind no more.”  The New Testament book of Hebrews explains that, indeed, the time of the new covenant has come -- that it took effect on the death of Jesus, ratified by his spilled blood.

The Christian understanding, then, is that we have knowledge of perfection written on our hearts.  Does this mean that we are to go wherever our hearts lead us?  I think not.  Though the perfect law of the L-rd is written on our hearts, I think there’s a lot of other stuff written there, too.  The very concept “follow your heart” can lead one down some very dark and clearly sinful paths very quickly.  Adultery.  Greed.  Idolatry.  These can all be seen as examples of the manifestation of following one’s heart.

When we want to know more about our physical heart, we use tools.  From a stethoscope, to a heart rate monitor, to an EKG, tools can help us better understand how our hearts are functioning.  Still, any of these have their limitations.  I bought a med school stethoscope for my two-year-old son so that he can hear his heart beating.  But if I just hand it to him, the chances are slim that he will make good use of it.  Even putting the eartips in his ears & the diaphragm in his hand, he is unable to be able to use the stethoscope correctly.  So, too, if you were to wheel a state-of-the-art electrocardiograph up to my desk, I would be unlikely to be able to learn much about my heart with it.  Just as Josiah would need some help to use the stethoscope to hear his heart, I would need instruction to make any use of the electrocardiograph.  We need both good tools and knowledge on how to use those tools if we want to be able to listen to our hearts.  But as I learned this morning, even a good tool that I know how to use can let me down.

What we need is a perfect tool and complete understanding of its use.

To know our spiritual hearts, I think that we do indeed have a perfect tool in The Bible.  But do we have complete understanding of its use?  The scripture I quoted above says, “No longer need they teach one another, neighbor or brother, to know the L-rd.”  How do we learn how to make the best use of our tools, then?  Do we really need no assistance in understanding The Bible?  Jeremiah is prophesying that we, in our time, have the perfect law written on our hearts.  My understanding is that The Bible is the perfect tool.  So, does this mean that what we have is sufficient for a total understanding of G-d’s perfect way?

Though I will change the battery on my chest strap today, I probably won’t run with my jacket on tomorrow.  So tomorrow I should know whether the worst-case scenario -- that my resting heart rate has been set incorrectly -- was to blame for the peculiar HRM readings today.  It’ll be Sunday or Monday before I will know whether simply changing the battery has fixed my problem.  If it works well tomorrow with a new battery & no jacket but then fails on Sunday, then presumably the jacket is to blame.  Here’s hoping that a $2 battery is the worst of my problems!

Favorite tool: Vibram FiveFingers

A few tools have proven to be particularly useful in my running life.  Perhaps another time I will discuss the role my treadmill played in changing my exercise routines, and I will probably repeatedly give props to my heart rate monitor and how that tool has allowed me to take my running to a level I had not previously anticipated.  But today, I’d like to discuss my favorite tool that has transformed my running: Vibram FiveFingers shoes.

In September 2009, the radio show All Things Considered did a piece on the emerging trend of barefoot running and the shoes that were becoming popular in response.  It didn’t strike me as something that I needed to go out to act upon right away, but I guess I filed the information away somewhere for later use.  The next July, as I was accumulating supplies for a mission trip to Mexico that I was anticipating, I decided that I needed to procure a pair of shower shoes.  Seizing the opportunity, I decided to take advantage of my “need” and acquire for myself a pair of VFFs to use in Mexico as my bathroom shoes. 

Allow me to inform you: VFFs make poor shower shoes.  Especially when you first get them, they are not easy to put on.  Also, though they do dry out, it is not quickly enough so that, after showering in them at the end of the day, you would want to put them on your feet to run to the baño in the middle of the night.  I ended up grifting my tent-partners’ shoes for those starry jaunts across the camp. 

Soon after Mexico, I brought my VFF KSOs (“keep stuff out,” a model that covers the top of the foot) to Destin to be my beach running shoe.  Again, they fell short of my expected use.  Once they became wet, they were very irritating to my feet.  By the time I totally overdid my beach run in Destin, I was carrying my VFFs, preferring instead to run through the stinking algae that lined the beaches at that time in my bare feet.  Strike two for the VFFs.

At some point soon thereafter, however, I started using VFFs on my treadmill.  I really liked the feel of the run that they offered.  VFFs let you feel connected to your running surface in a way that nothing else can.  Also, it was quickly apparent, they changed my gait.  I’m not an experienced runner, but the extent to which I was running differently was noticeable.  Now that I know more about the mechanics of what I’m doing, I know that running in VFFs forces you to run closer to the front of your foot and shorten your stride.  Also, in isolating each toe, you allow them to participate differently in your stride.  This significantly increases agility.

Vibrams became my daily running shoe.  But it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I began to understand the full benefit conferred by these shoes.  After the birth of my daughter, I switched my running time from midday at my lunch break to first thing in the morning.  This change allowed me to get to work early and regularly take afternoons off to spend with family.  This is also when I started using my heart rate monitor and running on streets instead of a treadmill.  As time rolled on and days grew shorter, I found myself running in pitch dark most mornings.  And, while the VFFs allow me to feel connected to the road, they also connected me to rocks and burrs and whatever else was on the street that I was unable to see in the dark.  It seemed to me that a conventional running shoe would address this problem. 

~~

Let me give a little background at this point.  I changed much about my life in 2002 and 2003.  It started when I broke up with a long-time girlfriend.  Seeking a personal renaissance, I joined a gym and started exercising daily.  At that time I was addicted to prescription stimulants and was a rather emaciated figure, weighing in at maybe 120 pounds at just over 5’9”.  I moved to South Carolina, re-introduced myself to G-d, broke my drug addiction, and I did what I could to maintain a decent exercise schedule.  In a sea of gym equipment, I found myself gravitating to the treadmill.  I never asked anyone how best to make use of the thing -- just hopped on, hit the buttons that seemed good, and got going.  For several years, this entailed speed walking at steep variable inclines.  I enjoyed the workouts.  It had been many years since I had exercised, and I relished the difficulty of the process.  Self-discipline has long been one of my strong motivating drives, and at that point in my life, I directed my self-discipline toward exercise.

But, as I have said, I was in the dark on what I was doing.  My only advice came from the treadmill itself and its programs.  Within a year, I was experiencing knee pain more or less constantly.  (My years of sitting in full lotus position, which was where I had directed my self-discipline in the previous decade, were certainly of no help in this matter.)  I went to an orthopedist for consultation.  He diagnosed me with medial synovial plica irritation, if memory serves me right, and suggested that arthroscopic surgery would be the best way to treat the pain.  I was uninsured at the time, so the arthroscopic surgery was out of the question.  I decided that I could bear the pain -- for a while, anyways.

Eventually, I began to change my workouts so that I wasn’t on such a steep incline.  This helped my knees, but significantly lowered the intensity of my workouts.  Over the next several years, I experimented with different types of workout to keep intensity high while not beating up my knees.

When I got my VFFs, something inside me said, “game on!”  I greatly increased the intensity of my running. 

~~

My understanding is that it takes some time to adjust to any new pair of running shoes.  When I got my conventional running shoes (Saucony Progrid Kinvara), I took it very easy on the roads for a couple of weeks.  Then I turned it up a bit.  That week I found myself walking differently.  I also noticed that when I wanted to stand still, I looked to find a position that would allow me to keep my knees bent rather than locking them straight.  After a couple of days of this, it started to become clear that what I was feeling was quite familiar.  Yes, this was very similar to the pain that I used to live with, day in, day out.  I had entirely forgotten about knee problems.  I had been running long, hard, hilly runs for months, and had never given a single thought to my knees.  Now that I was adjusting to a conventional shoe, the old pain was back and very real.  It seems that there is something of a slingshot effect on joints when you have padding in shoes.  The impact itself is initially lessened, but on return, it compresses the joint more than it would if you didn’t pad the impact to begin with.  The padding of the conventional shoe was making my knees work harder than the padding-free VFFs would.

Once I began to put two and two together, I began to explore my other “barefoot shoe” options.  As it turns out, Vibram makes a range of shoes, some of which are designed for specific activities.  On reading reviews of the Vibram FiveFingers Bikila, it seemed like it might be right for me.  Indeed, my Bikilas rock my world.  I can’t speak highly enough about how Bikilas have opened up my running options.  I got them in time for my second beach trip of the summer, and did my best to put them to the test.  I ran two 10k, two 5k, and a 20k run that week.  And really, I haven’t thought about my knees on those runs until now.

Bravo, Vibram!   Three cheers for making a product that can transform a life!