Beginning

I started running again. Pretty dumb I know. I used to love running. I was never terribly fast, about a 7 minute miler at best. I ran the New York Marathon in 2000 in about 4:30 with an ITB injury. Without the injury, I was shooting for 3:30, but I was happy just to finish. I also did a bunch of sprint and olympic-distance triathalons. Even though I really like swimming and hated the bike, I loved the run. I was a heavy teenager, about 225 lbs. at age 16. Then my drama teacher and friend Rob Foley got me into fitness training to try and lose weight. When I first started running I found it to be so tortuous I would sometime break down into tears because I just felt so out of shape. However, I stuck to it and not only did I lose about 40 lbs by my 18th birthday, I had fallen in love with running. Since then I ran for fun and fitness up until...

About a year ago I was told by a doctor that I had mild arthritis in my lumbar spine. I went to see him because my back was killing me. You see, I had always suffered from lower back pain, ever since I was in college. Some days my back hurt so much I couldn't even stand straight. My life became about pain management. Years later I became a personal trainer and heard all kinds of advice about how to manage my pain. People would tell me to give up running, buy this or that shoe, don't sit in chairs, read this or that book, ice, heat, cross train,etc. I tried it all and none of it worked. I still had pain, but I dealt with it. I still ran and when my back hurt I tried to ignore it. However, a year ago, I read a great article in the NY Times telling me that running shoes were the problem and if you do run, run in flat shoes. So I got my Chucks out of the closet and celebrated with a fast five mile run. Oops. Too much, too soon. My back was very, very angry at me. It felt like someone had stuck a rather large pin in the voo-doo doll version of me right on the left side of my lumbar. That's when I went to the doctor and that's when he gave me the bad news. Thirty-eight years old with arthritis. That news is pretty hard to handle for someone below 40, but at least now I knew what the problem was and even though the idea of not running anymore was unappealing, pain was less attractive of an option. So I gave up running.

No more running, but I still wanted to stay fit, so I went to the gym and lifted weights, boxed, jumped rope, did yoga. None of it gave me that feeling of freedom that I got when I was running. Running is different from every other kink of exercise. It doesn't take any fancy equipement, it gets you outside (unless you're on a treadmill...yawn), and it doesn't cost more than a pair of sneakers. Then, after my year of forced exile, I was listening to NPR (Nerd Public Radio) and Leonard Lopate was talking to some guy named Christopher McDougall who wrote a book called Born to Run. The book was about...well...running. The main focus of the book was a tribe of indigenous people in the Copper Canyons of Mexico, the Tarahumara, who run. That's an understatement. They really run. They love it. They live for it. Running is their raison detre. My girlfriend gave me the book for Christmas and...I'm not one of those guys whose life gets changed by reading a book, but this book changed my life. The cause of my back problem, according to the studies done in this book, was in fact my running shoes, just like the NY Times said. It's not that I've been wearing the wrong running shoes, it's that I've been wearing running shoes at all. The Tarahumara run races in excess of 50 miles wearing homemade sandals. No arch support, no stability, no cushioning, no motion control, just a thin piece of rubber cut from an old tire and some leather straps to tie them to their feet.

Running shoes allow us to run far, fast and hard. They also let us run incorrectly. Simply put, if you run with cushioned shoes you can strike the ground with your heel, which is terrible for you. However, if you run barefoot you land softly on your midsole and naturally roll your foot inward towards the padded ball of your foot. Running barefoot also forces your body to align itself properly. My uncle Stuart loves to run leaning forward like a linebacker going in for a tackle, slapping the ground with his feet. Take off his shoes and that posture would not be possible.

Could this be it? The answer I've been looking for? Well, it's worth a try. I've decided to get back into running. This time, though, it's not to lose weight (though that would be nice), or prove to myself that I'm not the unathletic misfit I've always considered myself to be. This time I want to see how far I can go and how much fun I can have getting there.