Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The Runner in Winter — Running Times Performance Podcasts

Anton Krupicka never ceases to inspire me.  Advocate of minimalist shoes, master of eliminating the unneccesary things in life, and top ultrarunner.


"Running Times’ correspondent Joel Wolpert caught up with trail runner Anton Krupicka to see how he runs through the Colorado winter. As do all of Wolpert’s films, this one features local music: songs by Denver, Colorado bands The Lumineers and Paper Bird."




Monday, January 17, 2011

Introducing Toe Salad | ADVENTUREinPROGRESS

A fellow blogger that also writes about minimalist shoes, backpacking and family adventures has started a new website call Toe Salad. It is basically an open forum where people can input, dialogue, rate and review minimalist shoes. It already has a lot of valuable information and I think will be a great resource for those looking for options for minimalist footwear. There is a lot of minimalist footwear entering the market this year and the options are growing... The shoe companies are paying attention!!

Here's the link to the new website: Introducing Toe Salad | ADVENTUREinPROGRESS

Thanks Damien for pulling that together!!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

TC Running Company: Embrace Winter

I really enjoy running outside in the winter and I'm sure that makes me an odd duck! I enjoy the challenge of determining what I'm going to wear from my footwear all the way to my headwear. I enjoy the serenity of the trails and even the sidewalks as most stay inside to keep warm. It turns out I'm not the only one. Check out the blog post below from the TC Running Company located a short distance away from my office:

TC Running Company: Embrace Winter

Enjoy the fresh snow!!

Forefoot Striking and Pronation: Insight from an Ultrarunning Podiatry Student | Runblogger

More and more studies are being completed on how running barefoot or in a minimalist shoe affects our running form. Here's an interesting article that was just posted on runblogger.com. I have been running in minimalist shoes and barefoot for over a year and have found that the 6 month adaptation period it talks about in the article is pretty accurate.  Click on the link below to read the article:

Forefoot Striking and Pronation: Insight from an Ultrarunning Podiatry Student | Runblogger

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Running Update and My Shoe Lineup

Knee issues (patellar-femoral syndrome initially diagnosed in summer of 2007) sent me down a path of re-evaluating the active side of my life... I have fully converted to minimalist footwear and when warm enough (and not dark out), barefoot running. Running in a minimalist shoe has gotten me back into running and I enjoy it for the first time in my life. Running in a minimalist shoe retrained me how to run with the correct form and now I know how terrible my form used to be. I used to be a heavy heel striker, so it's now wonder I've always had some sort of knee, ankle or hip issue.

My minimalist shoe line-up started off with VFF KSO's (Oct 2009) and then I added Feelmax Kuuva Boots (Dec 2009), Feelmax Osmas (Feb 2010), Terra Plana Oaks (Dec 2010) and recently won a pair of Vivobarefoot Neos (or Evos depending on availability) through Donald's Running and Rambling blog. I love testing out new shoes and have pretty completely only wear a minimalist shoe whenever possible.

I do have a pair of Inov-8 295s (Almost 3 years old and ready to retire) and recently purchased a pair of New Balance MT 101's. These don't fall under my definition of minimalist (however, they are minimalist compared to the majority of running shoes used by the general population), but have worked well for me for trail running, running in snow and hiking/backpacking. The elevated heal of these trail runners doesn't seem to affect my gait too much on an uneven surface like trails and snow.

But alas, my new enthusiasm with running caused me to overtrain for a 25k trail race last spring and since then have been wrestling with IT Band issues. After much research and testing to keep it from flairing up, my plan for my training will now consist of 1 long run per week and cross-training (core exercises, hiking, biking, weight-training, etc.) I've also found that the slow-to-medium pace running seems to irritate my knee the most, so I've adopted a modified Fartlek method of running. It seems that my knee doesn't seem to bother me when I run fast and it doesn't bother me when I walk. So after I warm up, I run hard and then power walk (to catch my breath), run hard and then power walk, repeat, repeat.... This seems to be the ticket for now and maybe at some point I can reintroduce longer runs with consistent slower running. This and icing my knee after every run seems to be the key to keeping the knee from flaring up from the IT Band irritating it.