thegreatape – Member

That’s what I’m doing, on to week 8 now, and it’s been fine. In some of those ‘barefoot’ shoes too, which haven’t caused me any injury problems at all, and I’m the wrong side of 18 stone with bust ankles.

How have you been finding it? I’m considering following it, but my knees are awful having suffered ski and snowboard accidents which messed them up for ages.

2 miles! bloody hell, that’s loads, probably about 20mins.

if you do want to run; walk away from your house for 10mins, run home slowly, walk if it hurts AT ALL.

no hills allowed, up OR down.

do that twice a week, for a month.

(if you don’t want to run where you live, drive somewhere nice, you’ll enjoy it more)

FunkyDunc

GP – so we get to see them first, and usually they avoid the orthopods. They get sent to Sports physios or have exercise modification, although one of my marathon running colleagues is currently waiting for a hip replacement… and I’d say we refer a few runners with non-resolving Achilles Tendon issues and non-resolving CMP/anterior knee problems.

I’d guess the ones we refer most on to Mrs FD’s mob would be rather different knee injuries (meniscal and ligament) relating to sports involving rapid changes of direction, Football, Tennis, Skiing, Squash back in the day. Also I see few people doing PE/Sports Science degrees who have their own problems – which is odd.

You could always try Ghosting or Speed Ghosting, as a gentle sport
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeNGSZK01Hs&feature=related[/video]

CaptJon – I’ve enjoyed it to be honest. I used the podcasts on the NHS website, so haven’t bothered working out distances or anything. It starts off with 60s running 90s walking x 8, and builds up to 30mins running. At the start it seems too easy, but I stuck to what it said to avoid overdoing it. I have quite bad back pain most days, and very stiff ankles from having torn them several times, so I have to go slow at the start until they’ve loosened up, but after that no pain at all. My back pain has been going on for years, so is not connected to running. In fact, it’s only really during running and for the rest of that day that there isn’t any.

I used to run but also suffer from bad knees as a result of many years footballing for 2 teams took there toll. The advice of my physio is NOT to run if you suffer from bad knees due to impact of running. I was told to take up biking (which I did) and try other non impact ways to keep fit such as cross trainer, spinning, swimming etc.

Can you name any other successful barefoot runners?

The Tarahumara Peoples….

When you say “successful” how do you qualify that exactly? If you want to point to successful running tribes we could discuss the Kalenjin tribe from the rift valley who have won more medals in world and Olympic distance running championships than any other however although they almost all begin running barefoot they all go on to choose to be shod given the opportunity, as did Zola Budd actually (she only raced on the track and occasionally XC barefoot the rest of the time she wore training shoes)
But thats not very interesting is it and we wouldnt want this inconvenient fact to get in the way of a bit of barefoot evangelizing!

My advice would be (as others have said) allow your body to adapt gradually and wear a comfortable pair of shoes.

Choose to be shod given the opportunity or choose to be shod given the sponsorship? I wonder if that comes into it at all?

Cheers, thegreatape, i’ll check out those podcasts.

Choose to be shod given the opportunity or choose to be shod given the sponsorship? I wonder if that comes into it at all?

The former given the ones I have met. In fact all of the runners I have met choose to train and race in shoes as oppose to their barefeet. Sponsored or not.

Ok thanks.