Pizza is a lot like sex. When its good, its really good. When its bad, its still pretty good.

-Mike Birbiglia

How Pizza Saved My Life

Pizza.  We all know it.  Most of us love it. I am from Chicago, deep-dish capital of the world.  I no longer live in Chicago, but I still consider it my home.  Suffice to say that Chicagoans love their pizza. But despite what type of pie you prefer, this is an article about how pizza can save lives.

Depression.  Just mentioning the word can make you feel like a Johnny Raincloud or Debbie Downer.  Yet it strikes millions.  Not clinical depression, but just that general down in the dumps feeling that strikes us from time to time throughout our lives.  Depression sucks, I think is a universal feeling.

Forgive me for a moment while I spin a little trail of logic that will guide you to the same conclusion I had, in that pizza can save lives.

First off, a little scenery please:

It was the winter of 2008.  It was a cold February day up in the suburbs of Chicago.  There was snow on the ground but it was much too cold to snow that day.  The temps were somewhere around 0F.  The previous week I had tried my luck at testing whether I had the genetic makeup to be an ultra-running superstar.

What I did was map out a 26.2 mile route in my car and run it, starting at 11pm at night.  I had only run about 14 miles previous to this, and had just started running back in September.  I made it in about 3 hours and 40 minutes.  I was stoked.  I felt good.  The next weekend, I decided to tempt fate and go for a 50k, or 31.1 miles.

By mile 30 I had developed what I like to call the death march.  I could no longer hold my hand up, and my arms dangled down by my sides.  I don’t know if you would call what I was doing, running, it was more of a controlled stumble, as I could no longer really control or feel my legs in the sub-zero temperatures.  I was leaning forward, and felt that if I fell down, I wouldn’t have the strength to get up.

Well I made it back home, and I was so excited I hadn’t died out there. I let out a scream of satisfaction, ate a Clif Bar, and went right to bed.  I developed a severe stomach flu the next morning, which sidelined me for days.  I think the all the idiotic amount of running suppressed some immune function.

I tried to run again when I felt better but my IT band really hurt. Imagine a hot knife, jabbing into the outside of your knee.  Not good.  Days went by, then weeks.  I still couldn’t run without pain.  I got to be really depressed.

Enter pizza stage right.  Well, up until this point I had been eating very healthfully.  It is a different mindset when you eat well in order to be in top condition to do what you like, instead of just eating well to lose weight or get healthier.  I stayed healthy to run, not the other way around.  I decided, “Screw it, Im making a pizza, its not like it can affect my running anyway!”  I hadn’t even thought to cheat on my diet up to this point, but I felt like crap, so I didn’t care.

I realized as I sat there and ate my deep-dish pizza with pineapple, olives, onions, green peppers, and sun-dried tomatoes, that I no longer felt like hell.  I felt good.  I felt alive and happy again. Maybe it was just my heart struggling to pump all the fat through my veins, but I was sweaty with giddiness.  What had been a big deal before, doubting whether I would ever run again, no longer seemed as bad.  If I would only stop worrying and just let my leg heal, I could resume running, and be a little less idiotic with my training ideas.

So here is my logic.  Depression is caused by a lack of being able to be made happy by things that should make us happy, like puppies.  Depression, in the worst cases can even lead to suicide because someone cant even be happy with their own life, let alone puppies, so they decide to end it.  No one has ever chosen to die though, to my knowledge, while eating pizza.  Pizza makes us happy.  Therefore, pizza not only makes us happy again, but  can then likewise, through curing depression, save lives.

Who knows what sort of downward spiral I would have gone down if that savoy deep dish gut bomb hadn’t been there to give me a delicious slap of reality.

So thank you pizza, for saving my life!

Running is, in actuality, not thoughtless!

- Chris Regnery

And You Thought Running Was Thoughtless? Part 3/3

This is the last part of this 3-part article. Up until now we have looked at what running does to oneself during the act of running, and we have seen how emotions and pain are not things that we should run away from in running.

To fight them is to fight against something that cannot be beaten without making yourself less of a person. In this last part, I get a little philosophical and a bit more in depth with my metaphor of running being like life. Forgive me if it comes off as a little heady, but hey, running for 5 hours at a time, sometimes you cant help but dig a little deeper into things.

It will never be possible to fully explain running.  Just like Kurt Gödel, who came up with the Incompleteness Theorem for mathematics, who states that you will never be able to truly know a system of mathematics if you have to use that system to define itself.  The only way to reach mathematical truth and full knowledge is to step outside the system.  While in the system you cannot describe it fully because to do so would require you to look at it as a whole, as though it were in your hand, which you cannot do because you are inside it.

It’s like trying to describe a house while sitting in it.  You can make references to the inside, and what it would look like from the outside, but because you cannot get that critical point of view from the outside, you’ll never have full knowledge of the whole house; the truth of the house, so to speak.

Well, the house for Gödel was mathematics and logic.  If you truly want to have complete knowledge, you must step outside the system to see what it is, but you can never do that with math because you cannot describe math with anything except math. Anything else is too imprecise to use, so to Gödel, mathematics was not real, but just a fun tool used to describe reality, but would never get the whole picture because it had limitations.

Limitations are what make math the most accurate way of describing reality. Mathematics is the descriptive language of physics, which is used to describe chemistry, which is used to describe biology, which is the study of life. However, reality doesn’t have limitations, there is something naturally wild about it- hence all the strangeness in quantum mechanics which states that in reality certain things only have a probability of happening and not a certainty of happening, and so to truly grasp reality in its fullest, without any probabilities and theories and equations and limitations, you must be able to get at it by a system without them, a system without limitations, really without a system at all since a true system implies limitations- it requires separate interacting entities-and reality has none of these things, it is a limitless whole.

Well, this may have pissed a lot of mathematicians off, but it works well for this analogy.  If you were to try to get a runner to describe what it is about running they like or enjoy, or try to get them to explain why they do it, as soon as they open their mouth it has been reduced to something its not and they know it.

Running is a metaphor for truth and life. It is an individual’s expression of freedom. It is in a way, an art. The fluid effortless motion of a good runner is a beautiful thing and an expression of the runner. Each runner is different and each has their own stride, they each paint a different picture on the canvas of reality. A look at a runner should be enough to describe why they run, just as a look at a Picasso painting would answer most people’s question of why make art. In fact it is just the same as asking an artist why they paint or sculpt- the answer will never be enough.  It lies beyond descriptions in a way that to try and describe it is limiting the limitless.

Zen has something to say about this as do many religions.  Many meta-physicians also know of this truth.  The idea that you can know something with all of your being but you can’t describe it, and so it comes out as a sound, a gesture, Mu, what-have-you, shows that they know what they are talking about, so to speak.

So running is art, is Zen, is Mu, is Jesus, is God, is life, is you, and is me.  Yet it isn’t.  Its a statement of mind not a statement of words, which is why I think so many runners have a hard time describing why they run and come up with something half-assed like, ” I run because I can”, or “Why not”, or “seems like fun”, or “My dad used to beat me when I was a kid so I ran away from him until I decided I liked the feeling and joined the track team”.

These are glib answers and are offered only because in seeing the essence of running, like life, they can’t put a handle on it with words without coming up short, very short. To try and describe why a runner runs with a full-assed answer would leave you with a treatise like this, and yet all that I have said in all this is that you can’t say anything at all. Perhaps this is why to this day I will tell people to go out and run a good distance themselves, and then they will have their own answer.

The real truths in life are not told to you, they cannot be taught in the classroom, although you can teach someone the best ways to find truths, they are only what others have used to find them, truths themselves are not describable. They are attainable only by experiencing them firsthand. To know them you must feel them, but they are more than a feeling- their knowledge comes before any explanation and they are greater than any system of description such as language or mathematics.

You must live life, and not shut off or shut out aspects of it you don’t like. This is not to say that we should be okay with murderers and rapists and the like, and it is not to say that we should prescribe to some sort of anarchist mentality.

It does mean that to be a human, means that we must accept that humans are capable of some pretty horrible, gruesome, unsettling things. We are also however, capable of some extraordinarily beautiful and altruistic things.

We must deal with this darker side, but not shut it out. To lock it away allows it to grow until it becomes unwieldy. We must harness this side of ourselves and use it. This is the passion many people will describe they have when they are writing a novel, or painting, or are out with their kids, or when they are drafting a proposal at work, or making a sale for their job, or while running through the mountains.

This passion makes one feel alive; I run to be able to reach out and touch reality herself, although at times I feel she is the one that touches me. You are a human, both with the good and bad, to shut one out, you are only shorting yourself part of your own humanity.

Anyway, I have now rambled on for far too long about something that I say can’t be nailed down with words.  So, to avoid self destruction and running the risk of sounding preachy, which I fear I have already done, I leave you now to find your own meanings and to, as always, work to help yourself GrowStronger.

Running barefoot on rolling fields of grass, vibrant green and soft from a recent rain, is like running on velvet, who doesn’t want to run on velvet? No one, that’s who.

-unnamed notorious barefooter

The Barefoot Revolution: Part 4

With yet another successful week under my belt, there are a few lessons that I feel I should share.  The goal of this post is to group all the advice, lessons, and tips that I have shared and learned since going barefoot, and put it all  in one place.

So, my advice will start with how I feel one should start going barefoot, whether running, or walking.

*Just do it.  Start right now by taking off your shoes and socks and walking   around the office or your house barefoot.  When you can, run errands, go for walks, and if you feel like it, going on hikes barefoot will also help the transition.

*Listen to your sole(s).  Judge how far to push yourself each day by the soles of your feet.  When they get tender and raw, stop, that’s it for the day.  You may need to bring along another type of footwear on any walks, runs, or hikes until you are confident you can tolerate all the time it will take to complete these outings barefoot.

*No More Athletic Shoes!!  Unless you want to modify your shoes by cutting off the heels, try to use non-supportive footwear any time you need to wear something on those feet.  There are dress shoes that have flat soles with no heel lift for the office, and there are many versions of athletic looking shoes that also give you minimal support and no heel lift.  Wear sandals when you can, but if you have to wear flip-flops, go for the least cushioned varieties.  Learn to make your own huaraches.

*Learn what to wear for those times when you cant go barefoot.  Whether huaraches, moccasins, racing flats, Vibram Five Fingers, a racing flat, or a water sock; sometimes going barefoot just isn’t possible.  Right now in much of the country it is getting colder and running barefoot in the snow will not be a feasible option.  This winter I will be running in a pair of water socks that I got off the Internet for $10.

Ok, so now you know what to do, but how do you do it?  Well, here are a few tips for a smooth transition that I have learned so far:

*For runners, run only as far as your soles tell you to run, and NO MORE!  If you start to move towards barefoot in the colder months, move down from supportive footwear slowly.  If you run in Brooks’ Beast shoe, you may want to step down to something like their Adrenaline before you go to a racing flat.

*Learn to run with proper form.  Barefoot runners don’t land on their heels.  They cant, it hurts too much.  In fact, landing heel first was something that was only possible with the invention of the modern running shoe.  Learn to run barefoot by starting to land on your mid-foot and forefoot.  Land with your foot directly underneath your body, and with significant knee bend.  Learning to run this way will cause a bit more work for your quads, Achilles, calves and feet, but they will adjust quickly.

*Do Not Push Through Pain.  Leave this mentality for races.  In transitioning and training, this mentality will lead to certain injury.  Notably in your feet, Achilles tendons and calves.  Almost across the board, beginning barefooters suffer very tight calves and Achilles.  Stretch these prodigiously and massage as often as possible.  Don’t run if they are painfully tight.  Similarly, your feet will feel the adjustments next.  The tops of your feet, shin muscles, arches, and plantar fascia will all feel tight and sore as these muscles and ligaments and tendons all start to work as they should.

*Forget sticking to a training plan.  Just set guidelines for your training.  Shoot for a certain distance or time to run each day, but don’t push it just to finish those last couple minutes if it means pushing through tightness or discomfort.  That discomfort will just be there stronger the next day.  Better to call it quits for the day and walk home to run again tomorrow, than try to be macho and sideline yourself with a pulled muscle or sprained foot.

*Run on the hard stuff first.  There is no better judge of proper form than concrete.  Learning to run or walk on the least forgiving surface will ensure that your mechanics are solid, meaning you will suffer less injuries later because of these perfected mechanics. Also, in the beginning its easier to avoid debris on concrete than on a trail.  After a while, it wont matter, you can just run over it all.

The number one lesson I have to give people though is this:

*RELAX.

When you find it to be tough going, or when your feet start to feel sensitive or feel abraded, when you feel yourself tightening up, Relax.  Don’t tense up more then needed.  Don’t forget to land with short quick strides, knee bent, on your forefoot, and back straight.  Relax your shoulders, relax your feet.  The best runners in the world, from Usain Bolt to Haile Geberselassie all look smooth and relaxed, no matter what the pace.  Tightening up will not only make your run uncomfortable and tire you out sooner, but it will cause unnecessary pain.  A tense barefoot runner is more likely to land with too much impact force.  They are more likely to pull a muscle. More than anything though, landing on seeds, gravel, twigs, even glass will be painful and demoralizing.  Landing relaxed allows you to smoothly float over these obstacles.  Focus on putting your foot down and picking it up with not kick-back.  Land softly and lightly.  Kiss the ground with your foot.

Well, that about sums it up for this week.  Next week I will address all aspects of proper bio-mechanics in a totally barefoot running stride.  That topic alone will be quite intensive and was beyond the scope of just one article.  I have laid out here and now though some basic guidelines to follow in order to grow stronger and healthier feet.  As the first things to hit the ground, it is only fitting that they should be just as strong and healthy as the rest of your body.

And dont worry, your feet will not get rough or callused.  They will get tougher and the skin will thicken, yes.  However, running on concrete is great for buffing out any rough spots and leaving only smooth soft skin.  The one common misconception is ugly feet, but your feet will become more muscular, defined, the soles will toughen, become remarkable softer, and plus, they will be tanned.  In the end, barefoot running makes for beautiful feet!

There are no securities in nature, life is either a daring adventure or nothing

-Helen Keller

And You Thought Running Was Thoughtless? Part 2/3

As the second and middle part of this article, I am going to share with you some thoughts on how emotions and sensations of pain are part of the journey as a

human, and how running can be a great metaphor for life. I will discuss how giving in to these sensations in running can teach you a great deal about yourself and help you grow not only as a runner, but as a person. Trying to suppress your emotions and running away from pain will leave an emptiness that many people will end up filling with money, sex, drugs, or alcohol. Working to incorporate these things also fills this emptiness and unlike the others, helps us to be better people. I think that this is a great metaphor and you can it and apply it to all areas of life.

One note on pain. I am talking about pain more in the Buddhist context, where suffering is considered pain and suffering is perhaps the main focus in Buddhist teachings.  I am not referring to the sharp immediate pain associated with trauma to the body.  This would include things like broken bones, sprained ankles, getting tattoos, or piercings.  These types of pain are immediate and denote injury.  Seeking out this type of pain just for the pain with things like tattoos is also not what I am talking about

The types of pain associated with suffering are more in line with the mental and physical and emotional pain associated with a long day at work, or with being on your feet running for 8 hours, or with losing a loved one or your job.  These sensations of pain and suffering are, in my opinion, things we have to come to grips with in life and things that help us deal with situations better.  Learning to accept these types of pain helps to make you more healthy emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically, and this is something that Growstronger.com is all about.

Part of being human is to feel emotions and pain; part of being alive is to suffer, if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t.  To put suffering into a negative context makes it bad, but to look at it as it is-part of being human and just another emotion and feeling- allows one to feel more alive, more high with life, than you could ever do if you gave into it.  You will be rewarded with a true high of life that truly allows you to focus now not on the intensity of the pain, but on the beauty of life and the knowledge that you are life, and you are not just running with the trees and rocks and stones and grass, but they are running with you too, they are no different from you.  By accepting pain and suffering for what they are and not seeing them as inherently bad, you become more compassionate!

This is not masochism. This is not sexual and pain is certainly not enjoyable to me. I would not want to be subjected to the emotional powder keg you get when you hit the wall every second of everyday. However, this is not because I think it’s bad.

I would get too used to it and it would cease to be what it should be. It is just like the emotions associated with fun and happiness. If someone loved to feel good and to feel the release of riding, say, a roller coaster, they would try to preserve that feeling and not destroy it. If they rode that roller coaster all day every day, the release would become mundane and no longer fun for them. In fact, they would come to see it as a bad thing because its now become just another thing they do that seems purposeless. So no, just because I accept that powder keg doesn’t make me a masochist.

Those feelings are a part of life, and to want to run away from them makes you less alive and less human. To accept them is to feel more alive, more human, and makes what was once mundane, exciting; it makes people and situations that once seemed to annoy you, to not seem all that bad at all. To accept suffering and pain makes you feel more compassionate.

At least to me it does.  Perhaps you now think I am certifiably crazy, rambling on about running as though it were the secret to life.  But this doesn’t even begin to encompass the range of feelings and the joys of running to me.  That is the reason why I run, and so much more.

The conclusion to this article will be posted next week.

Dude, take your shoes off and live a little!

-Barefoot Ted

The Barefoot Revolution: Part 3

These last two weeks, up through today, Sunday October 4, 2009, have finally given me a taste of what it will be like to run for hours on end without shoes.  Imagine being able to leave you house, wearing only a pair of shorts and a shirt, needing no shoes, and being able to run through the rain, through rivers, on trails, and on road without any thought to what shoes I need for today, or what socks would be good for wet weather.  This fantasy is now becoming my reality.

Two weeks ago I was running a steady 40-45 minutes barefoot, all on concrete and asphalt.  I was able to finish all of these runs no problem, but after a few of them, namely certain runs that would not be on the baby soft concrete of my sister neighborhood, but on the older and rougher asphalt of the jogging trails, would leave my feet feeling a little tender by minute 40.

That Saturday, September 26th, I hiked for 6 hours with my huaraches, then completed my last 40 minute run of the week barefoot.  After 6 hours of walking my feet were plenty sore, but I finished.

This past week however, was a different story.  Not only was it the start of the month of October, but it was also the start of what I feel is my own future with this barefoot running.  To start, I upped my times each day to 50-55 minutes of barefoot, but this week, my feet felt completely different.

I would like to note at this point that my idea to go completely barefoot has been the best idea and best path, I feel, for people who want to go with more minimalist footwear.  I say this because up until this week, I was able to run barefoot for my set time with no blisters, but it was slow going.  With nothing protecting you from the ground but your own skin, your stride and bio-mechanics will get in check really quick.  I tried to speed up several times during my initial building phase, thinking I could pick up the pace a little, but each time I did either my calves and Achilles would start to tighten up, or the soles of my feet would not land right and would scrape the ground at toe-off.  This would of course cause me to slow back down to where running was comfortable again.

This past Tuesday, I had one of the best runs ever though.  I started off slow as usual, but decided to go for a run on the asphalt walking paths in my area, they are more scenic, but also rougher.  I was able to keep the same pace no problem.  My feet felt like there was a layer of leather protecting them!  I clocked myself for a stretch of road that I knew to be a mile, and at my normal lazy pace I completed it in about 10 minutes flat…not too bad for no shoes.  I passed into a neighborhood that was all smooth concrete, and tried the same distance, but this time I would go as fast as I could.  I clocked it off at about 6:45 for that mile!

The next day I went down to Purdue Campus and ran on all sorts of surfaces new and old, rocks, pebbles, stairs, even treading lightly over some small pieces of glass, all without problem.

Today, Sunday, I did another hike, this one 7 hours, with an additional 1hr 40mins of barefoot running in the middle.

After 2 full months I would like to report that my feet are changing for the better.  The soles are thickening, but not callusing, it is more like a soft layer of leather.  They remain quite smooth, but the cushioning of my feet themselves is now growing to disperse some of the shock and pressure of running barefoot.  My only regret so far is not starting this sooner because it is starting to get cold and I will soon have to put something on my feet to handle all the snow that will surely come this winter.

At this point my advice to anyone would be to listen to your body 100%.  If you get tired and your stride starts to break down, take a break or call it quits for the day.  If you get sore or stiff while you are building up, do the same, stop completely and call it a day, or take a break.  So far I have run only as far as my body will let me each day.  Some days the 40-50 minutes of running is not enough, so I will either go for a long hike barefoot or in my huaraches, or I will go for another run in the evening of about an hour with my shoes on.

I will leave you with a cool tip I have heard to do, and did myself with much satisfaction.  If you must run in shoes for some reason, and you don’t want to spend money buying a pair of racing flats or something with minimal cushioning, this is what you do.  Take your pair of trainers you are using now.  Look at them from the side.  You will notice that the heel foam and cushioning is about 2x as thick as the forefoot.  Well in order to run more easily on the forefoot, take a strong serrated knife or a small saw, and cut a wedge out of the heel so that the heel foam is the same height as the forefoot.  The wedge should run from the back of the shoe, towards the middle where the foam becomes a consistent thickness, tapering down as you go.  This will leave you with no tread on the heel, but if you are running with proper technique, you should be landing on your forefoot anyway, so the heel tread is useless.

Let me know if you have any questions and Ill guide you through it.  Take care and Happy Running!!

Either things will get better, or you will black out on the pavement

- Dean Karnazes

And You Thought Running Was Thoughtless? Part 1/3

There are two schools of thought when it comes to distance running and how it is best to accomplish a set distance.

In one school there is the idea that the sport is running and that one should run through a race with no walking breaks outside of the necessary bathroom breaks and the time it takes to go through a checkpoint or refill a water bottle or backpack with supplies. You run the race as far as you can, then walk when you can no longer run, and if you have to, crawl, but you give it your all and leave everything out there, exposing yourself to your own limitations and pushing them to the edge.

The other school of thought surrounds the notion that you can be faster if you use a run/walk strategy. This would involve either breaking down the running with walking breaks every set number of minutes- such as 25 minutes of running and then 5 minutes of walking- or using the land to determine when to walk, such as going up or down steep inclines. The idea is that the walking helps to give your muscles a break from running and in doing so keeps them fresher for longer so you can run the sections that you do run, relatively faster.

Well, this is a tried and true strategy and the best runners in the field will use this strategy to win race after race. I don’t, but then again, I like to run.

I don’t worry about my time anymore, I just like to run, so I run as far as I can, then walk if I have to, but I would rather finish slower and run more, than finish faster and walk some.  Not that walking is bad, I just get into a zone and go, and when I hit a wall, breaking through is so much sweeter when it’s not with the knowledge that it was done while walking or knowing that I will get to walk in a few minutes, its done knowing that I hit one wall, and it hurt like hell; I broke through and let the tears flow, knowing full well that I wont get any breaks till the next one- except for the time it takes me to refill a water bottle or grab some food out of my bag if I should need to do this.

I think I finally have my answer from a debate I was having with myself about using a run/walk strategy or running all the way.  I LIKE running all the time, granted I will have very different paces through a run- moderate at the beginning until I feel warmed up, then I go very, very slowly for the next 10 miles; the next 10 are at my normal long run training pace, and I finish strong with my 5k pace- this is for a marathon length run, its different when I go longer.

The last two times I ran this distance, I would stop at halfway to refill my water bottles and grab a sandwich from my pack, although I was eating a package of shot blocks every hour too, but I had those in easy reach and just ate and ran. I had to get the sandwich out of my pack so I had to walk to do that to avoid running off the trail while looking through my pack, although it takes no more than 30 seconds to get the sandwich and put the pack back on so the walking is relatively nil.

Sure enough, both times, I hit the wall at around mile 20.  I wanted to quit so badly.  I felt worse mentally than anything my body was going through, although my feet were hurting and wet and blistered, my legs ached, my back ached, my shoulders ached, my hands hurt, my fingertips hurt and everything on my body was ultrasensitive to pain.  I could barely keep my eyes open.  I wanted to quit more than anything.  My emotions were in the toilet; I wanted to lie down and curl up and start crying, not because of the pain, but because my body and brain chemistry were committing haru kiri.

Plus, it’s mentally taxing more than you might think to keep it together and run for 20 miles.  I felt as though someone could stab me in the chest and I would thank him for doing me a favor- I didn’t care what happened to me, I just wanted to quit.

Then the depression gave way to anger. I didn’t want to quit but my body was going to make me, my mind and emotions were going to make me, and so I got angry.  I started running harder, the more pain my legs felt the better. It was their fault I was so in pain, so now they were going to be punished for this treachery.  I used my upper body more too, involving every muscle that was aching, just to let it know I wasn’t going to let its whining stop me.  I found that all this was so extreme, the physical pain and fatigue, the mental anguish and fatigue and depression, especially the severity of the emotions, that I let out this long, guttural, primal yell.  Immediately after this I felt better.

Not just a little better, but instantaneously a lot better.  My body didn’t hurt as badly- it was tired but not in pain- and best of all, my mood had cleared.  I was only a few miles until I was going to finish and be able to stop running, but I felt like I could go another 15 or 20 miles.  It was so much different now and yet my emotions were still so high it was confusing.  It was as though I had lost a very close loved one to a slow and painful death only to realize that as I was at my most depressed and angry, that it was a mistake, and they weren’t dead after all, but standing beside their casket shaking my hand .  I ran back up to the house after running more than a marathon with tears because I knew that from now on, all the fatigue and pain, and tiredness and depression, and wanting to quit, NEEDING to quit, HAVING to quit, is all mental.

Sure my body would get tired, but properly fueled and injury free, it was all in my head as far as everything else was concerned.  My body would give out well after my mind if I held it together.  I was higher than a kite, or any drug I had taken in the past, that evening.  That was the first time I had pushed that hard without giving up or walking and it paid off in spades.  The next week I went through the same thing.  Even though I had had the revelation that everything was mental, when you are that tired and feel that bad, you think it was just a trick of your mind that it happened before.  Rationalizing the irrational, or the “unrationalizable” is not possible.

Part 2 of this 3 part article will appear next week, so dont forget to check back next Tuesday, or you can become a member and get email notifications letting you know of each new post!

The Barefoot Revolution: Part 2

All good things come to those who wait.  That should be the motto of barefoot running. On Thursday, Aug. 20th, I started to develop some pain/tightness in my right foot.  I thought nothing of it, after 10 minutes of running it ebbed enough that I finished my hour long run without any other thought about it.  Little did I know that this decision would lead to injury.

This post will be the second installment in a series of posts about my journeys into barefoot running.  Again, I do not advocate going to or not to barefoot running above what you are already doing.  I like the idea of paying less on shoes every 2 months.  I also like the idea of strengthening my feet and lower legs and working on my stride.  I also personally feel that running shoes keep going more and more towards support and cushioning that in the end doesn’t seem to help people keep from getting injured.  So these series of articles will explore my own experiences.

The next morning after my last run, I woke up, stood up, and my foot immediately was in pain.  Sharp pain that radiated throughout my midfoot.  I tried to go for a short run, thinking maybe it was just a catch or it was me just still being tired and not really focused and I just stood up wrong or something.  I made it 100ft and turned around.  I waited until Monday to run again, but the same thing happened Monday morning.

Feeling depressed, I researched my symptoms on various podiatry journals and found out I had most likely sprained the second toe at the tarsometatarsal(TMT)joint.  This is a classic mid-foot sprain apparently, caused by excessive torque on the foot while up on the balls of the foot.  I followed the advice given, and took a week off, and iced and taped my foot everyday.

The following Monday, foot still taped, I ran in my huaraches for 1 mile.  No pain during or after the run, so that was a positive sign.  I ran 1.5 miles the next day in shoes, and a 5k in the sandals on Wednesday.  Still no pain had returned.  I noticed that running in the sandals felt better than in shoes, and was easier and more fun. That was interesting.  I alternated between sandals and shoes for the rest of the week.  I discovered that I was beginning to hate my shoes, they wrecked my form, and it always felt like I was trying too hard in my shoes because they were so inflexible compared to an almost bare foot!

When I run barefoot (or in sandals), I have to pay attention to my body, I am made to focus on how I am running, and on my stride at all times.  With shoes its the other way around.  I don’t have the same feeling of the ground and can easily drift off into not paying attention at all to what I am doing.  This leads to bad form.  Running without the shoes is almost like a forced meditation, you are perfectly in sync at all times.

At this point, I decided to go totally unshod, and not use my shoes at all, but how could I do this without getting injured, I wondered?  A common complaint when transitioning among barefoot runners is pain in the calf, Achilles, and foot.  After reading up a little on barefootrunning.org, I found my answer.

I would have to go totally barefoot.  The reasoning behind not using a transition shoe or a sandal or anything else in the beginning is sound.  The idea is that the soles of your feet, not yet being tough enough to handle running for as far as you could in shoes, should act as your mediator, telling you when to stop running for the day.  My soles would have told me to stop before I got too sore, too stiff, or pushed as hard as I did.  Running in a transition shoe had allowed me to push all those newly stressed muscles and ligaments kept safe in my shoe too hard too soon.

So, that Monday, September 7th, I ran a 5k barefoot.  My feet felt a little tender, but not in pain.  I ran a 5k again on Tuesday, and the rest of the days that week through Friday, and each day was fun and pain-free.  I ran a 10k on Saturday, also pain-free, and it was FUN!!  So, what had I learned then?

The key is the beginning.  I am now thinking that the way to go is totally barefoot for beginners until you build up to being able to run around what your normal daily mileage was with shoes-not counting any long runs obviously.  If you want to eventually wear some minimalist footwear, do that after your initial phase of totally barefoot.  Go only as far as your soles will let you each day.

So far I feel good about this barefoot thing. My feet and legs are getting stronger and my stride never felt better.  Next week, I plan on going out for 40-45minutes/day instead of the 30 I did this week.

My eventual goal has changed now somewhat.  Instead of 10 weeks to shoeless freedom, it is just to get to my old daily mileage of 15-20 miles.  Once I make it to that totally barefoot, I will start using my sandals and resume building up to a 50 mile run, it just may not be the 50 mile run that I wanted to make by Halloween.

The Barefoot Revolution: Part 1

Well, I know what you are all thinking, “Is he talking about barefoot running? What is he crazy!?”  Well, yes, and that remains to be seen.  There is growing evidence, though much of this subject still remains controversial, that running barefoot is better for you.  If anything, not spending $80-100 on running shoes every 1.5-2 months would sure be nice!

As part of a series of articles, I will be documenting my transition time from running with shoes (shod), to running shoeless (unshod).  I am not going to get into great depth with regards to the research behind this.  There is a lot out there, and as it is such a heated topic, I am just going to leave that section alone.  Should you feel that you would like to do some research on the topic, look for articles that are published in scientific journals and not ones published in newspapers.  Above all, I do personally feel that since we were not born with shoes on our feet, and that we existed fine for 10s and 100s of thousands of years running either barefoot, in sandals, or in shoes with no cushioning, that this is good enough anecdotal evidence for me to at least try it out.

Lastly, before I begin, I would like to clarify that my barefoot running will be done not technically barefoot, though at times I will be running completely free of anything, but with a minimalist sandal called the Huarache.

OK, so now to discuss my first couple weeks of transition, and let the madness, literally, begin!!

After reading some scientific evidence to suggest that my leg and foot health could be improved by running barefoot, I decided, like all things with running, that perhaps I just had to try it and see if it was for me.  Thursday, July 30th, I went for my first barefoot run.  For the previous month I had been suffering from shin splints that had caused me to take 4 days off from running and then greatly reduce my training plan so as to ease back into my previous mileage of about 100 miles/week.

That Thursday, I ran for 25 minutes, mostly on paved roads and sidewalks, and what a different feeling that was!  For days after this run, my calves remained very tight.  I had to stretch, massage, and apply heating pads multiple times a day, through the weekend to loosen them up.  If this barefoot thing was going to work, I wanted to make sure I did things right to give it a proper shot at success.

That weekend, while massaging my calves, I came up with a tentative, 10-week transition plan.  This post will cover these first 2 full weeks.  The first of those weeks, the week beginning Monday, August 3rd, would hold two 30 minute barefoot runs.  The crux of my plan would include a weekly addition of 1 barefoot run, and 10 minutes added to each of the runs that week.

So, that first week had me at 2 runs at 30 minutes each.  My first 30 minutes was fantastic.  It had started to rain, which I always enjoy running in, and running barefoot in the rain was so primal, I felt like Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans.  By Thursday, I had bought a sheet of 6mm thick Vibram Cherry soling, and some latigo leather laces to make my huaraches just like the Native Americans in Copper Canyon use to run their 100+ mile races.  That Thursday run in the sandals was definitely an experience, those sandals would take some getting used to.  Already I was wondering what types of things I would have to deal with in by barefoot transition and I had just finished my first official week!!

My next week consisted of three 40 minute runs, which I ran in my huaraches.  My calves still required frequent heavy stretching after these runs, and now my feet, especially my arches, started to feel it as well.  However, after one particular run, the 3rd of the week, I started to feel what I hoped was a taste of the bounty that the future might hold.

I had just completed a 40 minute loop shod, and was now lacing up my huaraches for their 40 minute portion of my run.  As soon as I started I noticed how light my feet felt.  With no shoes, my stride seemed to be much more free to be natural as it wanted.  I finally stopped noticing the laces on my feet, and could run as if the huaraches weren’t even there.  I completed this loop only 1 minute slower than with shoes on, and a 1 minute difference over 40 minutes is really next to nothing when you aren’t paying attention to the time!!

So, 2 weeks were down, 8 more to go.  I want to wear my huaraches for at least half of the 50 mile run I want to complete on Halloween, so trying to make the next 8 weeks go by smoothly will be key.  Little did I know that I would partially sabotage my own efforts early in week 3.  Stay tuned for the next installment of this adventure to find out what happened!!

We have looked at what the nutritional guidelines of the beginning and average athlete are in the previous post, Nutritional Needs of the Neoathlete.  While these are excellent guidelines for most athletes to follow throughout the day, there are some more specific guidelines to follow if you participate in an ultra-endurance sport.

How does the daily macro nutrient intake differ?

Is it necessary to take in specific types of food before during and after exercise?

What types of foods should these be?

When and how much of should I eat during an ultra event?

These are a few of the questions that I want to address, and answer for you in this post.  There are many different types of performance foods out there as well as guidelines to follow for the intake of these foods.  I am going to take a bit of a unique approach, the ultra approach, in giving you my recommendations for Ultra-nutrition based upon my experiences.  I encourage you to try them and adopt them if they work for you.

How does the macro nutrient intake differ?  Macro nutrients (fats, carbohydrates and proteins) are what fuel us through our day.  For your average or beginning athlete, you are exercising upwards of around an hour a day.  In addition to their normal daily calorie intake, they may add another 300-600 calories.  Most likely these calories come from a sports drink and maybe some protein powder.

The Ultra-athlete, however, requires a different tactic.  Since they are working out for perhaps 2-4+ hours a day, they must look at their daily nutrition in terms of before workout, during workout, and after workout, in addition to those times when there is no workout on the immediate horizon.

The ultra approach:

Try to eat 5-6 smaller meals during the day.  Either your 3 main meals with substantial snacks, or just 5-6 meals of  around 400-600 calories; based upon how many calories you need to maintain your weight. Cut out as much processed sugar, hydrogenated fats (also called trans fats), and saturated fats as is humanly possible.  Add healthy oils like olive oil and flax seed oil.  Try to maintain a macro nutrient ratio between 40-50% carbs, and 25-30% fat and 25-30% protein.  Good between meal snacks can and should include mixed nuts with dried fruit, fruit like apples, bananas and oranges, an energy bar, a protein shake, a salad, etc.  You  get the idea.

Is it necessary to take in specific types of food before, during, and after exercise, and what types of foods should these be?  Short answer, yes and a balanced food intake.  When you put your body through multiple hours and perhaps multiple workouts a day, every day, you body and immune system is going to be working overtime to try and make any repairs it can and to restock as much fuel as it can before your next workout.

To make this easier for your body to do, and to give it the fuel it needs to do this as quickly and efficiently as possible, it is necessary to take some extra steps beyond what the average athlete would do.

The ultra approach:

Believe it or not, I am recommending that you learn to run right after eating.  I am NOT talking about eating a large meal and then doing hill repeats.  I recommend trying to take in about 200-300 calories within 30 minutes of a run. This should be mostly a carbohydrate source with some protein.  Adding a little protein can help prevent muscle damage, and the carbs help by keeping some fuel ready as the muscles will start to need it.  Some fat is OK too.  A banana and mixed nuts or oatmeal with peanut butter are a couple of my favorites.

Learning to run after eating will help your body learn to digest while you run, and it also helps to keep your speed down in the beginning of a run so that you can warm-up properly.  More importantly though, it helps you get more used to ingesting foods while you run.  The normal go-to foods of gels and chews may work if you are only running for a few hours.  But you are going to want something more substantial while you run.  You will burn 500-600 calories an hour while your run, so learning to digest more calories will help to offset this.

During a run, some trail mix with chocolate candies, m&m’s, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, energy bars, bananas, Ensure, smoothies, or even cheese can be eaten to help with the demand your muscles are making for more fuel.  Aim for eating around 200-300 calories in the beginning and try to add more calories each run until you feel comfortable eating 400-500 calories.  I want to make a couple important points here.  Do NOT try to follow a strict schedule of calorie replacement/hour.  Don’t try to eat, for example, 200 calories every 30 minutes.  Also, dont try this for your shorter runs.  If you bike, substitute bike for run, but I am talking about your saturday long runs where you may be out for 3,4,5 or 6 hours; or whenever your long runs are.

You will find that sometimes you will just not be hungry.  In fact, if you are running hard in a race, you may not feel like eating at all.  This is normal.  In this case, try eating 200-300 calories every hour to hour and a half, but if your stomach feels queasy, don’t push it, slow down until you can stomach the food.  In fact, I recommend eating only when you feel hungry, and you will learn what the feeling of hunger is when running.  Also, shoot for taking in not just carbs, and in this case, very simple carbs are the best, but also a good amount of protein and fat, which should be no problem because you will be craving fat anyway.  The foods listed above are good examples but feel free to experiment!

What should you be eating after exercise or a race?  This is a much easier question to answer.  You want to follow the same approach laid out in the post, Nutritional Needs of the Neoathlete, but with a bit of a twist.

The ultra approach:

Try to focus on replacing whatever caloric deficit you have within the time frame of the length of the workout.  This sounds complicated, so let me just give you an example:

• You ran for 10 hours, burning about 550 calories/hour
• You ate, on average, 400 calories/hour while running
• 10 hours of running times 550 calories equals 5,500 calories burned while running
• You replaced a total of 4,000 calories while running (10 hours times 400)
• That leaves 1,500  calories that need to be replaced post run over the course of 10 hours, which is not all that bad

So, you want to eat about 300-400 calories of simple carbs, good protein and fat, within 30 minutes.  That leaves us with 1100-1200 calories that you have around 9.5 hours to replace.  You will want to just average that out and add it to the meals you would be eating in this time anyway.  The difference here is that you will want to focus on the frequency of the meals.  Even if you do not feel hungry, you must try to eat every 2-3 hours, and try to replace some of the lost calories.

You body will be working overtime to repair what has been done to it, and your immune system might also be suppressed.  The best way to maximize a quick recovery is to eat early and often.  Eat lots of fruits and vegetables.  Dont forget the protein.  Fat is your friend.  After the initial 30 minutes switch to more complex carbs or unprocessed carbs like fruits.  A good rule of thumb when in doubt is to avoid the “3 Whites”.  This would be white sugar, white flour, and white fat(shortening).  This should also be your rule during normal nutrition hours.

Well, we now have a complete picture of how to eat to fuel performance and health as an Ultra-endurance athlete.  I encourage you to experiment on your own with what foods and intervals work best for you.  These are only guidelines that we at Growstonger.com feel are great starting points to help each of you reach your maxium potential and to push yourselves to growstonger everyday.  Happy eating everyone!!

Seeing as how I have just finished a run, and that I am now waiting for my food to finish coking, I think this would be an appropriate time to discuss post exercise nutrition. There are several different schools of thought on this, at least from my own personal experience.

First we must separate the exercising reader into 2 groups:

* The strength and anaerobic exerciser
* The aerobic exerciser

It seems almost like a stereotypical scene, the body builder loading up with protein shakes. It seems to be common knowledge that the weight-bearing stress plus calories (especially protein) equals increased muscle mass. However, among the more cardio-focused public, nutrition is less of an exact issue. Or at least, that is what we’ve been toldJust to clarify, I am referring to endurance athletes, be they runners, cyclists, cross-country skiers, swimmers, or anything else. Many new to these sports may be starting them as part of a weight-loss program. They figure that the point of the exercise is to burn calories, and if they replace them after a workout, its not helping their weight-loss. This can be true, but only to a point.

Depending on a myriad of factors, including: sex, body size, metabolism, age; the average amount of calories burned/person/hour is around 500 for a sport like running, give or take 100. According to, thefitnesscalculator.com, a 140lb man, running for 30 miles burned around 2740 calories. Spread out over 5 hours and that equates to around 550 calories/hour. This may or may not seem like a lot, and depending on how much you are running, you might not worry about eating after you run; but here is where you may fall into a bad situation.

If you exercise every other day, you most likely dont have anything to worry about. You will refuel your muscles and body during that rest day and be able to recover before your next workout. If you exercise everyday, or multiple times a day, post exercise is critical to not developing any deficits.

You may not think about it, but the body’s two principle sources of fuel for the muscles are fat and glycogen, glycogen far and away being the preferred source in most cases. Under extreme circumstances, when glycogen is depleted, the body will have to break down its own muscles to get at their carbohydrate stores, but at this point you should be more concerned with how you are going to walk up and down stairs for the next week!

After a run, your body is going to be depleted in its glycogen stores, and a little of its fat stores. Your body will burn fat with the glycogen, and there is a saying that ‘Fat burns in a carbohydrate fire’ which means that you will only be able to metabolize fat while you have carbohydrate (glycogen) do burn too. In order to facilitate recovery, theres a narrow window to start to replenish these stores most effectively.

There is a well-established ratio of carbs to protein, 4:1, that allows the most efficient re-absorption of carbs into the muscles. There are some specifically formulated sports drinks with this ratio, but there are other options as well. Chocolate milk and chocolate soymilk are both good choices as they have protein and some sugar (think 4:1) and there is a new study pointing to milk as a recovery drink (see references at the end of article for all studies). Other choices could be smoothies with added protein, or protein shakes with added glucose. You could also just eat a balanced meal at this point if you are near a meal-time.

Whatever your choice, you want to focus on eating about 300-400 calories within an immediate 30 minute window, and then to replenish any remaining calories you have as a deficit, during the remaining time after the workout, that you took to workout. This sounds a little complicated, but it is recommeded as a good guideline by Joe Friel, author of the Triathletes Training Bible, and coauthor of The Paleo Diet for Athletes, so let me just give you an example:

* You run for a total of 1.5 hours
* You burned around 750 calories (your deficit)
* During the 30 minutes post-run, you ate 350 calories
* That leaves 400 net calories that you still need to replace
* You ran for 1.5 hours, so you need to replace the calories you burned within 1.5 hours after your workout, you ate 350 in the first and crucial 30 minutes, so you have 400 more calories, and 1 more hour to go
* During that last hour you have to replace those 400 calories in order to relieve the deficit and facilitate maximum recovery

Again, to sum up, you ran for 1.5 hours and burned 750 calories, so you have 1.5 hours after your run to replace those 750 calories most effectively. You consumed 300-400 calories within 30 minutes, and the rest during the remaining hour after that.

If you ran for 2 hours, you would have a 2 hours to replace what you burned, and again, would eat 300-400 calories within 30 minutes of the run.

Now, the consequences of not following or not being able to follow these guidelines are not especially drastic. If you can only take in calories in the 30 minute window, that would be the main point to follow. If there are other unforeseen circumstances that prevent you from eating right after a workout, its not like your body will suddenly just fall apart. However, when you have a workload in training that is quite intense, say:

* Running every day of the week, week after week
* You are doing a lot of mileage building
* You are doing a lot of speed work
* You workout multiple times a day

then you may notice that you will be more tired and sluggish after repeated sessions of not eating right. Its not that you will be punished for not following these guidelines, but that you can reach a higher potential by trying to maximize every factor of your workouts.

Dieters, you should follow the guidelines of the 30-minute window(eating 300-400 calories withing 30 minutes of working out)for any exercise that lasts over about an hour, and then you dont have to focus on the rest of the calories you would have to eat during any remaining time as you are trying to lose weight. However, dont skimp on protein, you want to lost fat, not muscle!!

Following these guidelines hopefully we all can be happier and healthier, and can all work towards growing stronger!!

http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/sports-nutrition-glycogen-levels-need-be-replenished-post-exercise-67

http://sportsmedicine.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=sportsmedicine&cdn=health&tm=21&f=00&su=p284.9.336.ip_p736.8.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi%3Fcmd%3DRetrieve%26db%3Dpubmed%26dopt%3DAbstract%26 list_uids%3D12235033%26query_hl%3D15%26itool%3Dpubmed_docsum

http://cme.medscape.com/viewarticle/524370