Bike Touring

Even though my first bike tour – when I was fourteen – was pretty much a rainfest on the Oregon Coast, my second tour was an equally damp outing in the San Juan Islands a year later (at an age where it’s pretty easy to get jaded/disillusioned quickly!) I’ve had a lifelong fondness for this awesome mode of travel, and was fortunate enough to find a partner in Ash who shared my enthusiasm for it (she took the unconventional way home from college after graduation:  she rode her bike home to Washington from Yale in Connecticut).   

I’ve since ridden the OR coast (in blazing heat that time), one big, post-graduation trip that took in England, Scotland, Wales, Holland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, former Yugoslavia, and Greece; and after a bit of a hiatus I did a trip to Baja, and once I met Ash we have been on a pretty consistent schedule of at least one or two tours per year and have been to Norway, Bulgaria, Mexico’s Copper Canyon and Jalisco, central Idaho,  Peru’s Highlands, Western and Eastern Cuba, France’s Pyrennees, Italy, Colorado, Montana, Jellystone/Tetons/Beartooths, and a few in Utah as well (I wrote an article for Utah Cycling about last summer’s CO sojourn that just came out here: http://www.cyclingutah.com/june/Cycling-Utah-June-2013-Issue-counter.html - it’s near the end of the issue, which for some reason is having a tough time loading on my machine…).  And on Thursday I’ll be starting my first Asian bike tour, riding effectively 500km from Seoul, Korea to Pusan. 

Ash and I invariably remark on every tour we do:  “Why aren’t more people into this?”  When I did my Big Tour around Europe fresh out of college I thought “man, when people find out how awesome this is, this activity is going to catch on like mad!”

And truth be told that it sort of has along with the meteoric rise in the popularity of road riding, though this growth has come via trips that are done in a bit more controlled manner with people doing guided and/or supported, gear-free trips.  Those are fine, but it always seems like those trips sort of miss out on the what is the essence of being on your bike: the freedom to just go where you will and let the events, weather, accomodations, people, and nutty experiences just sorta flow your way.  I think that one reason that people are sort of turned off by bike touring is that the concept of carrying weight on your bike – when you’re accustomed to zipping along on your 16 lb bike on 23c tires – is daunting.  But the truth is that when you’re on a bike tour the only thing you are doing is riding your bike  - or not – and whether you go 50 miles on a “loaded” rig or 70 miles on a speedster, it doesn’t really matter; you’re just riding along and putting out the same amount of energy regardless of your speed.  And the truth is that you don’t need much:  a handlebar bag, rack, and rear panniers is all that we ever use to tote our gear, and we have definitely done our share of mowing unloaded cyclists down on climbs, so it’s not actually all that slow. 

And you get to really appreciate scenery like this!

And it’s cheap; if you bring camping gear it pretty much costs food (though admittedly we invariably become The Great Metabolizers after a few days, so the food bill goes up!).  And, of course, the great beauty is that for exercise nutcakes like us, the vacation and the fitness are pretty much one and the same. 

Ash (little yellow dot on this low-rez photo) near the top of 12,000 foot Cottonwood pass in Colorado

When I was in Norway I had the unusual experience of driving a lot of roads (finding rivers to kayak) and then riding the same roads a couple of weeks later.  I was amazed at how I pretty much had the life sucked out of me in the car and through lidded eyes and a dulled brain I missed a lot/most of what was going on outside, and how stoked I was to be on the bike later on the very same roads. 

And the opportunities to meet locals en route is remarkable. I don’t know if it’s the fact that touring cyclists are somewhat rare, or they are more vulnerable and therefore approachable, or there’s simply no metallic coccoon around them, but the ability to meet and chat with local folks when on a bike tour is unmatched by any other mode of travel.    A lot of people go to different places/countries to see “things” – natural, ruined, magnificent, etc, and that’s great – but driving and even using public transportation sometimes it’s easy to be separated from locals, But when you show up in a French boulangerie covered in sweat and dust and enthusiastically gobble down some amazing pastries and wash them down with water coming out of the town square spigot; well, for some reason that kind of stuff makes it pretty easy to engage with people. 

An awesome Cuban painter

Some great folks in Paonia

A roadside stand proprietor in Cuba

some folks we stayed with in Cuba

And when else do you get to hang out with barn animals?

That said, Bulgaria’s people, perhaps still affected by the the post-Cold War scene, did not really engage with us much, and I’ll be curious to see if the Koreans (who seem to be known for their industriousness and stoicism) will be similar.  And for sure, in the case of Bulgaria and in Korea the complete and utter lack of any kind of language communication can present a bit of a barrier (in addition, to – I anticipate – a fair bit of consternation as to where to go, what to eat, etc).   And no doubt, you are at the mercy of the weather: wind (I rode for a week down the Yugoslav coastline into the Bora winds), rain (it poured incessantly on Ash after I had to leave her in Norway), heat (I nearly expired on the south coast of Cuba), and cold (I did a 20 mile descent out of the Dinaric Alps with the temp well-below freezing) can be challenging, but part of the fun is dealing with the unforseen challenges that invariably arise. 

Sand is a good challenge as well!

I don’t necessarily feel compelled to “promote” things like mountain biking, backcountry skiing, kayaking, etc because there are already plenty of people doing those activities and the resources are a bit limited.  But Ash and I feel like EVERYONE should bike tour, and the “resource” is truly infinite.  I’m stoked to get back on the steed in a new land.  



Enlightenment

On Thursday I had the pleasure of watching Ash get inducted into The Utah Community Foundation’s Enlightened Fifty Club, which, in their words: “recognizes fifty individuals who are making a measureable – but often unsung - difference in the lives of Utahns through innovation, collaboration and commitment to the common good.”   When she first told me that she had been nominated and chosen, I was a bit taken aback:  “’Enlightened?’  That’s a bit of a loaded term!” because it seems a bit lofty and perhaps a bit snobbish.  And ironically, it was at the venerable Alta Club downtown, which apparently only started allowing women in the building in the 80’s?!?! 

But regardless of the term - and they seemed to be preferring the term “E-five-oh” at the presentation – it was great to see Ash be included in a cadre of people that are both impressive and inspiring in what they’ve done for their communities.  It’s probably fair to say that the talent of these folks and the level of accomplishments would probably put them at the CEO level of many companies, but as it is they are making a fraction of their private-sector counterparts yet, it may be argued that they are getting a lot “more”  ouf of their inspiring work than salaries can account for. Here’s the site with the list of folks:   http://utahcf.org/the-e-5-0/item/1362-congratulations-to-the-2013-e-50

Unfortunately they don’t have the paragraph that was read about each person; they were all really inspiring. 

And here they are:

Where's Waldo/Ashley?

Here’s the slide that was up when they were describing Ash and Wasatch Community Gardens:

 

And here’s the slide for our friend Lauren Scholnick, who’s been a fierce defender of employees’ rights:

 

And I wasn’t quite fast enough to get the slide for Lauren Barros, who has been an equally-strong voice for the lesbian/gay-parent community as well as many others in social justice litigations. 

Here’s the enlightened one, sporting her impressive lapel pin:

 

She was sort of hoping that this ceremony was going to convey upon her in one evening what these guys have spent a lifetime getting! 

 

Maybe next year the E-Five -Oh could convey some saffron robes?

Being generally devoid of any opportunity of public recognition of my own enlightenment, the next morning I went out for what invariably will be the last day of a great ski season with Colter and Tom McFarlane.  We headed up to the late-season icon of the Pipeline at Snowbird:

 

Somewhat challenging skinning and booting got us to the ridge above Little Cloud bowl, and then the broad summit of the American Fork Twins:

 

And then “deep” in this really nice line:

 

Colter finding his own enlightenment by kneeling in the snow:

 

Dropping in to the sick 2^nd to last snowpatch:

And now I just landed in Korea, where I’ll work for a few days before heading out on a bike tour that will incorporate at least some of the “Four Rivers Path”: a government-sponsored/built, relatively car-free bike route of 3-400 miles from Seoul to Pusan!  Should be an interesting adventure. 

Running Shoe follow up

On our little trip last week I was able to read “Tread Lightly”, a book that came out last year that is a bit of an update on “what has happened since Born To Run came out.”  I was a little discouraged initially when they opened with basically a rehash of “those amazing Africans who can run down gazelles” tale from Born To Run that – admittedly – is a pretty amazing thing.  But then the authors (one of them was a high school runner who stopped in college and then rediscovered running at the ripe old age of 30 after he was horrified by a photo he saw of himself and realized he was overweight, and his co-author is a 50ish guy who was a former triathlete who got out of it and then re-discovered running as well as a cathartic endeavor) used that as a platform to go into more depth than BTR did on injuries (why they happen and why they haven’t decreased), a more-thorough history of the modern running shoe, a more-thorough analysis of running barefoot, the rise (and fall) of the concept of motion control shoes, fascinating sections on foot strike and stride length, and also  - interestingly enough – finished with a chapter on nutrition. 

Overall I felt fairly validated that my own opinions that were generally created by observation and anecdotal “evidence” were generally reflected by these guys, who had done WAY more research.  It was pretty clear that both of them have been a bit “saved” by the modern, minimal running movement, but it was also clear that they were trying very hard to be objective, and referred to a lot of studies to back up their theories. 

With regards to the evolution of the running shoe, it’s of course the stuff of legend that Bill Bowerman made the original waffle soles with his wife’s waffle iron blah blah blah.  Slightly lesser-known is that he was also the protagonist of the elevated heel.  His theory was that tipping the skeleton ever-so-slightly forward would actually propel runners forward at a better clip.  At the time he was working with Onitsuka Tiger (the future Asics) before he and Phil Knight started Nike, and he was disappointed that they only acquiesced by 3/8 of an inch, instead of his desired ½ inch (he also is credited with using nylon as an upper material for his steeplechasers, since nylon doesn’t hold water the way that the leather shoes of the era did, not to mention being much lighter when dry as well).  The facts that Bowerman wrote a wildly popular book called “Jogging” and the US team enjoyed good success under his tutelage at the 1972 Munich Olympics  - where Frank Shorter won the marathon  - further entrenched the power that Bowerman’s perspective held. 

The authors’ perspective on the evolution of the “motion control” movement was that there was a general perception that runners pronate and runners get sore knees, so therefore shoes needed to control this movement.  They reference the military study that I had heard about that measured arch height and arch flexibility, and also analyzed the long-held association of the “wet test”; that is, your wet footprint – flat, normal, or obviously high-arched – with shoe style selection.   And they had found some other, more recent studies that put motion-control shoes on a variety of those who “needed” them and those who didn’t.  These studies proved pretty conclusively that a) arch height as indicated by the wet footprint test has   relevance to how much support one needs, b) medial posting – the most common method of limiting the pronation movement - doesn’t actually work, since our legs/body overcome that slightly-denser foam anyway, and c) those people who did pronate actually got worse with motion control shoes!  “Every runner in the highly pronated group who were supposed to be wearing a motion control shoe got injured.  In fact, highly pronated runners actually fared better in neutral-cushioned shoes.”  In 2011, a study was published in a British journal of medicine that concluded:

The findings of this study suggest that our current approach of prescribing in-shoe pronation control systems on the basis of foot type is overly simplistic and potentially injurious.

(http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/45/9/715)

 Interestingly, one of the co-authors of this study was Gordon Valiant, who is an old friend of mine and has been doing basic research at the Nike Sports Research Lab for eons (and, not only did Gordon run a sub-2:00 half mile at something like 45 years old is one of the biggest forefoot strikers I’ve ever seen!).  To be fair to the giants, good on Nike for allowing Gordon to be published like this…..

So why did it take 40 more years of before people started questioning the concept of an elevated heel and anti-pronation efforts despite the fact that many of the major shoe companies employed/engaged biomechanists and there was never any actual information that either of these things actually helped at all?  The authors point a lot of blame at shoe stores that were using oversimplified metrics (“the wet test”, watching people run from behind) yet were eager to sell people shoes, but having been in the biz for a while, I think it’s a bit more complex than that.  It’s a bit of a circular cycle:

 

I show magazines as being at the center of the problem, which is not necessarily the case;  they don't have that much power.  I think it’s more that they have a small effect on all the participants in the cycle who have little incentive to make dramatic changes.

I must say that I think it’s quite hilarious that despite 30-40 years of shoe companies trying desperately to one-up each other with their patented Flubber technologies it was a shoe sole­ company (Vibram) that introduces a product (Five Fingers) that changes their industry, and that product wasn’t even intended to be a running shoe in the first place!  Though this actually takes a bit of credit away from other companies like Newton, Hoka, Inov8, Vivo, etc that were being developed at the same time, and as mentioned earlier, Nike helped a lot with the Free.   

The book's section on stride length and footfall was quite provocative.   Basically, they indicated that most people – especially at the slower, more recreational level – overstride, which inherently creates a toes-to-the-sky, heel-first strike that is then supported by a thick, cushioned shoe heel (and is more taxing on the system, which may account for the fact that the average marathon times have gotten slower and slower over the years).  And what barefoot or minimal running effectively forces you to do is shorten/quicken your stride, but the truth is that you don’t need barefoot/minimal shoes to do this; you can just do it.  I’ve been experimenting a bit on this with both running and skinning on skis (after the brilliant Colin Gregerson told me in no uncertain terms that longer skinning strides are an absolutely less-efficient way to go uphill faster) and find it pretty effective.    And they pointed out that running faster – shorter intervals, fartleks, etc – is a great way to “pull” people into better, less-overstridy form in addition to increasing cardiovascular capabilities (as I love to say:  if you wanna run faster, just run faster”). 

And finally, nutrition.  They pointed out that “Boston Billy” Rogers did the entire running world a bit of a disservice by winning consecutive Boston and NY marathons in the late 70’s while espousing a diet of ice cream and mayonnaise-laden pizza, and that people have this opinion that “if I run, I can eat a LOT”.  Which means that a lot of recreational runners don’t necessarily see the pounds melt off/stay off the way they “should”, and that even as people are trying to shave ounces off their shoes, they may be allowing weight on their body to add – according to some studies – 2.5 seconds per mile for each extra pound on the body (over the “ideal” weight).  And extra weight changes the way the body is carried in the running motion, and change can manifest itself in injuries.  And the modern trend of sugary energy burst “food” products reinforces eating more - and not as nutritious – calories in general.   They advocate “turning back the clock on nutrition” (the name of the chapter) and reference Michael Pollan’s “Eat Real Food.  Not Too Much.  Mostly Plants” quote as a good summary that a diet of whole foods, fruits, veggies, etc can help manifest more injury-free running.  An interesting way to wrap up a book that’s ostensibly about legs, feet, and shoes.

If you’re a running geek or a shoe geek, it’s a great read, and if you’re only mildly interested it’s still a pretty good book.

http://www.amazon.com/Tread-Lightly-Footwear-Injury-Free-Running/dp/1616083743

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A Few Interesting Rivers – in different ways.

 

For the past week Ash and I have been on a little road trip that was precipitated by our niece Brooke’s graduation in Yakima, and we decided to pack way too much stuff in and on top of our car to paddle rivers, shred singletrack, and ski volcanoes in our old home states of Oregon and Washington.    Things were generally looking good weather wise a week or two before we left, with mild weather enabling good corn on the peaks and good flows in the rios, but then a series of storms started rolling in that would provide a bit more challenge to maximizing the Northwest’s goods. 

The elusive Jarbridge/Bruneau river had popped up briefly into floatable flows, just long enough and high enough that it got us excited that we could start our trip with that 3 day deeply-remote wilderness gem.  But the cool weather (and, as it turns out, lack of snow up high) shut that down, so we kept going into Oregon heading for the mighty John Day river. 

Despite the fact that both of us grew up doing rivers in the Northwest within a relative stone’s throw from the John Day and the fact that not only does it have over 280 miles of floatable water (longest undammed river in the West) but also 148 of those miles are designated as “Wild and Scenic” (Utah has exactly…..zero miles of Wild and Scenic river designations) neither of us had done any sections of it, and I had remembered seeing a huge framed photo of the JD canyon in our buddy Paul Ecker’s house that made it look spectactular.  The only problem with the John Day is that it is…..flat.  My “need” to run hard whitewater has been tempered by the fact that I live in the desert, don’t get out much, and therefore any river time is good time, but it’s always fun to at least run some whitewater.  The main John Day simply doesn’t have much beyond moving – barely, that is – water.  We considered the concept of doing what we have done many times in the past:  just do a combination of chasing down good – but short - whitewater runs on different rivers in OR/WA and then interspersing them with fun mountain bike rides and – in this case – charge up Mt Adams, St Helens, Hood, etc for some good spring skis, but the allure of leaving both the car and civilization behind for a few days was quite strong, so we loaded up our boats and headed down for a 2.5 day trip down the 70 miles classic wilderness section of the JD. 

What the John Day lacks in whitewater it makes up for in beauty.  The canyon is pretty much the columnar basalt capital of the world:

 

And it’s about 2000 feet deep, and that particular section is quite remote.  Despite the fact that we were doing it over Memorial Day weekend, we seemed to be somewhat behind the curve of other floaters, since we saw only one party on the first day and one other party on the second (the third morning we caught up and passed all the rest!).   And the canyon is indeed beautiful:

When we did the random hikes to get up high above the river the views were great:

remember this next time you want to buy balloons for your kid's birthday; we were a LONG ways from anywhere that this may have floated from...

And the river itself was nice:

 This was the last kayaker to dare the treacherous flatwater of the John Day:

and the camping was nice also:

We had met a National Park Ranger who was “checking out the trails” early in the morning in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (there’s a total of a half-mile of trails to oggle at petrified leaves and wood in the place where we stopped; all within sight of the road!) who – when we told him of our plans – asked “so, you guys eat freeze-dried foods?”  Uh…. no.  We bring a bag of wine, a lot of beer:

And some pretty decadent food:

Big Wood Bread Bagels, Chevre, Baba Ghanoush, zuke bread, organic figs.....yep, freeze dried!

While on the river we worked on perfecting a new sport:  whitewater napping:

And our fledgling careers modeling the latest in river fashion:

And Ash crushed me in the Scrabble rubber match to prove once again who is the Scrabble Champ of our piece of our world. 

The Yarrow was in bloom, which is cool (yarrow grows everywhere; from the coasts to the deserts to the mountains; the only plant – as far as I know, which isn’t very far–that is able to do that):

 

We were glad to be on the river, because even though it was the eastern-Oregon desert it rained quite a bit, and we were imagining that the peaks we wanted to ski were generally getting rained on and/or were pretty whited out.  We were not glad to not having brought a fishing pole along, because it’s small-mouth bass heaven, and though I’m pretty much a non-fisherman, I can do fried bass on a riverside camp! 

After getting off the JD we busted up to Hood River to connect with our buddy Tom Wooding who was only in town for one day, and we were able to shred some classic Hood river and Mt Hood singletrack between rain storms (It’s so nice not to have to worry about the rain/clay thing like we do in SLC; if it’s raining in Oregon….just ride anyway).  Then again faced with a daunting forecast of only rain, we decided the best place to be was on the river, so – after a 25+ year hiatus for both of us – we headed for the Deschutes River.

Long ago when I paddled in Oregon I personally designated the Deschutes a “sacrificial” river.  It’s dam-release, warm, consistent, developed, just enough lame whitewater to be a yee-haw rafting river that’s wildly popular, and  - truth be told, especially after being in the dramatic John Day canyon, not even that pretty.  But it’s as wet as any river around, so down we went to spend another couple of nights on the rio.  We saw LOTS of these guys:

Since it’s pretty famous for big trout, and the camping was decent:

Despite the periodic passing (ie pre-dawn) of this guy:

At one point we were stoked to see this sign giving us the opportunity for a side hike:

But we after going up these nicely developed stairs:

All we saw was this:

Looking for the trail:

Whatever, the Deschutes is lame!   But we made it into a nice time, as always. 

The last river of quick note is the White Salmon.  We didn’t paddle it (a stellar little river but we’ve both done it a zillion times) but it made national news a couple of years ago when the infamous Condit Dam was taken out after a many-year struggle to rid the river of the useless dam.  This used to be Northwestern Lake:

You can see the old concrete boat ramp to the right of the photo

And here’s a better-exposed shot of the river itself:

And now it’s just beautiful free-flowing river down past the old dam site down to the Columbia.  A huge victory for American Whitewater, American Rivers, and all the people who love free flowing rivers, and hopefully a harbinger of similar actions to come (dams have also been taken out on the Penobscot in Maine, the Elwha on the Olympic Peninsula, and the Sandy and Hood rivers across the way in Oregon).  It was super cool to see this and it was inspiring to see how quickly a scrungy little lake became a beautiful river again. 

Last year we had the good fortune to do a middle fork/main salmon trip for over 200 miles of awesome paddling, and that trip was hard to beat.  It was good that we acknowledged that fact, because this time we definitely did NOT beat that!  But we’ve had a fun week on the rios regardless,

Running shoes – my perspective

With the advent of Spring thoughts turn to summer activities, and for a lot of folks its running.  And, fortunately for me (job security) people seem to be pretty infatuated with running shoes.  Lately a few folks have made the mistake of asking me the innocent questions “what do you think of running shoes these days?” and “what do you think of the whole minimal shoe thing?”  and shortly thereafter looked for a place to hide to escape from my pontificating! 

My running shoe history dates back to buying sheets of waffle soles to put on my Nike Roadrunners:

in nineteen hundred and seventy-seven, to the far-superior LDV’s:

 a couple of years later,

to testing the very first Nike “Air” the Columbia:

the Air Max:

(which I hated; too squishy, and sucked all the life out of my legs)

and the Air Pegasus:

which I loved, because it wasn't too squishy (see the polyurethane in the heel, vs the EVA)....

and then I got a job at Nike, where I ran in pretty much every model they made for the next 5 years, which happened to correspond to the rise in the unfortunate genre of the “motion control” movement, with the introduction of the Air Stab:

and it’s Brooks counterpart, the Beast:

For years the shoe industry labored on, trying to convince runners that  really busy-looking shoes in silver, white, black, and blue (that looked exactly like their competitors’) with some sort of Flubber in the midsole was the way to a) run faster, b) not get hurt as much, without really doing that much research that supported either of these very desirable aspects.  While I was working at Nike a study was done with runners trying three different Air Max configurations:  1)  a full airbag, 2) a popped airbag, and 3) no airbag (with foam filling in the void).  We proved pretty conclusively that – at least on a treadmill – runners could NOT detect a difference. Needless to say, in the annals of published statistics, that little study was not included in any marketing materials!  And while I was at Saucony, I was tasked with taking their venerable “Grid” technology (a little injection-molded trampoline thing under your heel) and somehow exposing it on the side so it looked more like Air, Wave, Gel, Hydroflow, etc, with the directive of “just make sure it doesn’t hurt anybody!”  Inspired design indeed. 

And then it all changed. 

Several years ago I got a call from Tony Post, the president of Vibram USA, who said he had a cool little “kayak shoe” one of his Italian guys came up with that he’d like me to test.  That test never came about, but I was intrigued by the shoes with the funny little five-toe design, and thought indeed they'd be great for tight-fitting play boats.  Running?  Never even occurred to me, nor  - at the time - did it to Tony, who was a former national-class runner yet was completely innocent to the seismic shift those shoes were about to cause (one reason I love the Five Fingers: despite years of work and zillions of dollars spent on development and marketing, the running shoe companies didn't come up with The Big Concept: a boot sole company that didn't even make shoes did!) .  And then the book Born To Run came out, and I think it’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that book changed the running shoe industry, if for no other reason than Christopher McDougall made all shoe companies squirm by pointing out that – despite 40 years of footwear evolution - not only had Americans NOT become faster runners (actually, slower) but far more importantly, running-related injuries had NOT decreased at all!

So the two goals of running shoes  - increased speed and injury reduction – had not been accomplished, despite a ton of effort.  And then along comes the concept of NO shoes, or at most, minimal shoes, with the soon-to-be iconic Vibram Five Fingers leading the charge of the latter.   Chances are good that if you are reading this you also read Born To Run, so I won’t go into the details of what went on there.  But now, a few years later,  what’s the status of the running shoe market today, and what of the minimal “movement”? 

As is probably well known by now, one of the most oft-cited studies is the Harvard Study http://barefootrunning.fas.harvard.edu/ that showed that shoes with a lot of heel “lift” (in new school vernacular: too much “drop”) had this weird blip in the stride where a hard heel striker came to a micro-second stop, which was not present when running barefoot.  As indicated above in the Nike airbag study, I learned while working there that even scientific statistics can be creatively/selectively delivered to enable your likely-predetermined and desired outcome (in the Harvard case, the study was partially funded by Vibram).   And the simple fact that it was on a treadmill in my mind makes the findings a little dubious (hats off to the participants who ran barefoot on a treadmill long enough to validate a study; I did it for 5 minutes on an Asia work trip and blistered the bottoms of my feet badly!).  But there is no doubt that the concept of spending more time barefoot – running or no – increases the strength of your feet, and like all muscle strength, that’s generally a good thing. 

The problem with Born To Run and it’s application to the shoe market is that in the early stages of the “revolution” there were two concepts that were – in my notso humble opinion – inappropriately conflated:  1) the concept of “minimal” , and 2) the concept of taking down the “drop” (heel/toe differential).  For many years the standard midsoles (white foam between the rubber outsole and the upper) were >20mm in the heel and 10mm in the forefoot, and then all of a sudden the Vibram Five Fingers not only had virtually zero protection but also zero drop.  Both of these were Big Changes to what we had become accustomed to (has it been long enough for us to have “evolved” to this drop?) and making not only one but TWO big changes was a great recipe for injuries, which happened with regularity. We are not very good at moderation, so despite the salespeople’s admonitions to start really slow – like 10 minutes a day, or even less, for maybe a couple days per week, and work up very gradually - few people actually did that and instead went out for their typical 5-6 mile runs, which meant good job security for physical therapists!  And also resulted in a class action lawsuit against Vibram that is as yet unsettled.  However, even though it took a while, the manufacturers have recognized the value of lowering “the drop” – some to zero, some to 4-8mm – but have kept a bit of foam in place to enable “real” running and a more-reasonable transition to – perhaps! – a faster, more nimble stride.  In addition, the “barefoot” revolution has also pointed out to running shoe companies that many of their lasts (the footform that gives the shoe its shape) are too pointy, and that rounding the toebox enables the forefoot to more-naturally expand upon impact.

I do a lot of work with Merrell testing their products, and my testers’ reactions are commensurate with the popularity of their “Glove” line. The original Gloves were quite minimal:

 and it took pretty avante garde testers to really appreciate them, but lately the Gloves have taken on a bit more foam and have a minimal drop of 4-8mm:

and my testers have liked them a lot, including many who were surprised that they liked them.  The New Balance Minimus, the Saucony Kinvara, and Brooks’ Pure line have fed the mainstream, and fringe brands like Inov8, Altra, Zoot, and Newton have bet the bank on the “natural running” associated with zero drop and have experienced a lot of niche growth. 

Interestingly, Nike set a bit of a standard early on with its wildly popular Free series (5M pairs and counting!), but it seems to me that they have fallen victim to the pleasurable feelings associated with success, and haven’t progressed much past the Free (I’ve had a couple of Nike footwear folks tell me “oh, we addressed that minimal thing with the Free”, without – in my opinion – much acknowledgement that the Free is much more a fashion shoe – with its myriad of upper patterns and colors – than a performance shoe, per se). 

The Euro brands that are into trail running  - Salomon and La Sportiva, and to a lesser extent, Scarpa – seem to have been dabbling in the “revolution” with a handful of products, but having talked to those guys a bit myself it seems that they seem to take a bit of the Olde Worlde approach and are still doing shoes with more traditional drop and constructions and hope tht the "fad" wanes. 

There are two great things associated with this revolution:  the pressure to make shoes simpler and therefore much lighter (the average weight of a men’s size 9 running shoe has dropped from 12-14 oz’s to 8-10 oz’s) and the complete demise of the concept of “motion control” shoes.  I think most of the weight loss has been in the less-midsole and lower-profile and strategically-placed outsole lugs (rubber adds a ton of weight).  With regards to the stability/motion control shoes, I have had some discussions with Martyn Shorten, who ran the Nike Sports Research Lab back in the day and now is the lab-test arm of the venerable Runner’s World shoe surveys, and he told me about a huge military study that studied arch flexibility and arch height.

Plotting arch height (ie high vs low instep) vs arch flexibility (the propensity for the arch to flex downward under pressure), they found that us human beings are very evenly-distributed across this spectrum, as this very-quick graph shows:

The red areas are the extremes:  that is, people with high arches and no flexibility, or people with low arches and lots of flexibility.  Keep in mind that we ALL pronate when we run; we land outside and roll inside; it’s our gait, even for those who are full-on forefoot strikers.  Those who are in the red areas either don’t pronate enough or pronate too much – both of which can be injurious - and it was those people who were visiting podiatrists a lot with injuries.  The podiatrists, however, made the common mistake of assuming that this relative minority was representative of a larger population, and thus the concept of “motion control” shoes was born, and pitched to “pronators”, which as above, meant nearly everyone!  However, with the natural running movement came the knowledge that “motion control” was only a concept that needed to be employed by a very small percentage of the population (of my 300-odd testers, only a couple are in this camp) so thankfully this entire concept was essentially abandoned. 

So where does that leave us?  Generally the manufacturers have moved away from touting the next great midsole technology and are basically coming into a middle ground of simpler uppers (with more fun colors), lighter-weight, and less-drop, yet enough midsole foam to protect the feet from rocks, etc., and – importantly – a wider range of shoes for people to try. So there are tons of options, and in my opinion most are very similar to each other (many are made in the same factories by the same hands; the differences come in the recipes and the last, so if you find a brand that fits well, chances are good that the other shoes within that brand will fit well also).  Unfortunately, even though the shoes are now simpler, this change happened to correspond with the Asian factories' - both the manufacturing and the raw material suppliers - prices going up, so today's "simpler" shoes are more expensive than yesterday's more complex configurations. 

And running fully barefoot?  For me, I’m out.  After a whole summer of going barefoot as much as I can my feet are almost calloused enough to withstand just walking around and a bit or running in the park on grass, and for sure it’s super fun; you feel so light, fast, and nimble that it’s worth actually running for 15 minutes in the park.  For trails, some folks can go super minimal on rocky trails, but I still need a bit of protection from rocks.  If I ran more on super-buffed trails like Portland’s Wildwood, I’d be on shoes that barely have any lugs (and therefore weight).  And if I did that, I might be tempted to use the super minimal shoes like Vivo Barefoot http://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/ , Tony Post’s new Topos:http://www.topoathletic.com/ , or the Modaliti-designed B2R’s:  http://www.born2run.com/, or even the whackjob “Barefoot” Ted’s running sandals: https://www.lunasandals.com/

And whither the other extreme, the mighty Hokas, that seem to be dominating the ultra scene despite their awkward look and high price tag? 

Everyone who has them loves them. Full suspension bikes and fat skis for the feet.  Blast down technical trails with impunity, yet still light enough for long climbs.  Save your quads on those big early-season descents.  They are awesome. Yet interestingly, despite their puffy nature, they actually seem to have zero drop, so you kinda get the best of both worlds of enabling a more-natural stride yet providing the ability to rock descents.  When Born To Run author Chris McDougall visited SLC a couple of years ago I took advantage of the Q&A session to ask him what he thought of the maximal running movement, aka Hokas.  He respectfully demurred, saying he didn’t believe in it, but hey, there’s something for everybody.  However, Golden Harper, CEO of the McDougall talk-sponsoring Altra (http://www.altrazerodrop.com/) scoffed a bit and decried their lack of trail “feel”, and then closed the conversation with the statement:  “Those are just for going fast!”  Ahhhh, right.  Going Fast.  Don’t want that, do we?  (though I do have a pair of Altra Lone Peaks that I like).   I must say that in an industry rife with knockoffs (I’ve literally done work for competing companies that have knocked each others’ products off!) I’m a bit surprised that no one has done their own version of Hokas, despite the fact that these puffies seem to rule the true ultra market (note that they are soon to be delivering a new model that is slightly-less puffy and also fits a bit narrower than the current models). 

As ever, there’s a ton to choose from, and the good/bad news is that now there are a couple more important metrics to consider in your purchasing decision.  But generally speaking, I think the lighter weight and the less “control” that new school shoes have over your ever-strengthening feet is a good thing, and to fulfill that there’s tons of exciting options. 

Based on a referral by Mike Hales I just got a book called “Tread Lightly” http://www.amazon.com/Tread-Lightly-Footwear-Injury-Free-Running/dp/1616083743

that I’ll be reading on our road trip next week, and perhaps I’ll be changing my tune after I read it! 

As if this isn’t enough and you’re bored and need more, here’s a follow up article that I saw in a recent Outside Magazine (not that I would admit that I read Outside Magazine!) that is a good couple-years-later follow up to the minimal revolution:

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/You-Dont-Know-How-to-Run.html

and one of these days I'll go off on my standard rant about hiking "boots" and the conspiracy theory I have of a megacorp singlehandedly putting people in inappropriate hiking footwear for the last 45 years.....