Running Toward Healing

I wrote this essay while watching the coverage of the terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon. The Burlington County Times published a version of it, but they edited it so much that it was almost like a different piece. So here's the full version, for posterity:

When times are hard, I run or I read. So after I heard about the attack in Boston, I laced up my shoes and headed out. I’d already gone for my run that day, but sitting and watching people suffer when I can do nothing to help them eats at something deep within my heart. There are really only two horrors in this world: suffering, or watching others suffer and being helpless to stop it. So in the absence of anything more productive to do, I went out and ran until my knees ached and then I went home, and when I got there the television was still on and nothing had changed. So I looked to books, whose words have always brought me solace in troubled times.

I walked to my bookshelf and picked up A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel about love and war. I knew the passage I was looking for, but I needed to see it printed before my eyes. “The world breaks everyone,” Hemingway wrote, “but afterwards many are strong in the broken places.” I watched the people on television in the process of being broken. The video of the blast repeated on endless loop. Shock waves washed over a man, an old man, an inspiration, just trying to run a foot race, and I watched that man stumble and stagger and finally fall to the ground. The delusions of distance and safety I’d managed to reconstruct after 9/11 collapsed with him onto the Boylston St. asphalt. The day they flew planes into the World Trade Center I was starting my second day at a brand new job. I remember the same helpless feeling, wanting to help but having no idea what to do. My company sent us home, and I sat and watched the city burning until long into the night. Just like today, I wanted to get up and walk away. I wanted a break from the suffering, but I couldn’t tear myself away, and besides I felt guilty for even wanting a break, for thinking there is any such thing as a break at a time like this. Although my family are Yankees diehards, at that moment I wished I had a Red Sox hat. I checked my Facebook for updates on the runners I knew who had run the marathon, hoping they were okay. On the television there were people crying and broken bodies and spilled blood and severed limbs littered across the sidewalk like dead leaves discarded by an autumn chill.

On the news they were showing a still picture of that same old man after he fell. He was lying on the concrete, and above him stood three police officers, bright yellow vests over their uniforms. Hemingway hadn’t been the comfort I’d hoped for, but suddenly I remembered exactly the book I needed. It was the police officers that reminded me of it. Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007, but after his death his son released Armageddon in Retrospect, a book of his previously-unpublished short stories. A single line stood out for me when I read it the first time, and it came back to me now:

“The wreckers against the builders. There’s the whole story of life!”

I didn’t feel better. Vonnegut’s words are appealing, but they are too simple. Life cannot be so reduced. Yet in the midst of chaos, simplicity has a certain seduction. There will be time later for complexities, for the arduous task of rebuilding, for the impatient slog of moving on and starting anew, for rage and for justice. But when disaster strikes we need to cling to something. We need support lest we be crushed beneath the weight of an all too heavy world.

So let us be simple, and let us remember those police officers who rushed to protect a fallen old man. And let us remember the countless people, builders all, running towards fire and death to help strangers. And the people whose pictures will not be taken but who will scrub the innocent blood from the pavement, the people who will offer words of comfort, the doctors who will mend the broken bodies, the countless anonymous public servants whose names we will never know but who will find and bring to justice the wreckers who changed a day of dreams into a hell of nightmares. Let us remember all of us who pick up the pieces, full in the grim knowledge that the work of centuries can be leveled in seconds; who build anyway, each time higher, newer, shinier, glittering beneath a fickle sun, all of us whose languages are confounded, whose ephemeral works are prey to metaphysical and worldly and human depredations. We who know all this and neither flag nor fail in the face of inescapable transience, and so accrue a dignity accessible only to those who are builders, who know, before the first brick is laid, that their work will not, cannot, last. We build. We fall down. We build again. There is nothing else we can do. It is absurd, this life of perpetual construction, but it is who we are, the meaning and the purpose of our existence: we build.

I closed the book, filled a bag from the freezer, and sat down to ice my knee. Tomorrow there is another run. Wreckers do not rest. Our only victory is endurance.  

New Study: Vibram 5 Fingers' Effect on Bone Edema

I know I said today I'd talk about Chris McDougall and barefoot evangelism, but the results of a new study were released today, and I wanted to comment on that first.

The study results were reported on MSN.com and other news outlets. MSN pitched as a study that suggested minimalist runners should eschew the performance benefits of the running style, and instead should stick to traditional shoes because of the impact on the bones in their feet. This seemed off to me; barefoot running is not usually undertaken in search of better performance, but rather as a means to avoid injury and run more naturally. The same runner shod will torch his times barefoot. Of course, if wearing shoes gets him injured all the time, it might not be worth it, and that's always been my interpretation of the barefoot philosophy. So the MSN article doesn't make a lot of sense, and sounds like it was written by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. 

Of course, I don't much care what MSN thinks about the study. I want to read it myself. So I followed their link to the actual study. Unfortunately, due to copyright restrictions, I couldn't access the full paper. I could only read the abstract written by the study authors, which is helpful, but prevents me from really digging into their methodology, results, and statistical interpretations. 

Click Read More here or below for a more detailed discussion of the study, but here's the bottom line:

The Bottom Line: The MSN article is terrible and should be ignored. The study itself is sound methodologically, but suffers from some flaws in qualitative value. We don't know how the Vibram runners transitioned, so we don't know whether they did it the right way. We already know that switching from traditional to minimalist/barefoot too fast is stupid and will get you hurt. The p-value of the data is pretty good (p=.009, according to the abstract, which is within the traditional p=.01). This means there's almost a 99% chance these results proceed from an actual physical reality that Vibrams were causing bone bruising. This is a good start, but a lot more research needs to be done. The study's conclusion is sound: if you transition to minimalist/barefoot running, GO SLOW. 

Books On The Run- Born To Run pp. 1-100

Part 1 of a Series

Nuance is not Chris McDougall's style. He writes like a heel striker slamming the pavement in their ultra-padded running shoes. Born To Run is as interesting and exciting as it is maddening and annoying. McDougall shoehorns an inspiring tale of unlikely heroes into a worldview that, at least so far, begs so many questions it's almost as if the author took exactly no time whatsoever thinking through the implications of his thoughts. In the first one hundred pages, I have felt compelled to enjoy the story despite the often disappointing commentary. Let's tackle the two separately.

The Story

Born To Run is an inspiring story of triumph, innovation, and the incredible things humans can do when they set their minds and bodies against impossible tasks. McDougall's writing keeps you right there with the runners. Writing about the actual events of an ultramarathon is a tricky task that he handles well. The action moves seamlessly and you feel the pulse of the race right along with the runners. The Tarahumara are compelling characters in the narrative. They're mysterious and joyful and insouciant in a way that recalls something far older than themselves.

On pg. 74, McDougall tells the tale of "Martimano Cervantes, a forty-two-year-old master of the ball game, and his protege, twenty-five-year-old Juan Herrera. Choguita is bitterly cold at night and sun-scorched by day, so even when running, the Choguita Tarahumara protect themselves with fine woolen ponchos that hang nearly to their feet. As they fly down the trail, capes flowing around them, they look  like magicians appearing from a puff of smoke." This a great description that captures the mystery of the hidden tribe, and you can't help but root for these guys, especially when they run up against the iron-willed Ann Trason, a community college science professor who, at least according to the book, is the champion of the female ultramarathon world. By the end of pg. 100 (and the close of Chapter 15), their showdown is not yet finished, and I can't wait to find out what happens. This is by far the strongest part of Born To Run: this story needed to be told.

Books on the Run

Reviewing Christopher McDougall's Born to Run

Interesting note: In the original, there is 

another man sitting next to the silhouetted man 

on the cover, and the hill is covered with graffiti. 

Both were Photoshopp'd out for the book's cover. 

Today I'm beginning a series of posts about Chris McDougall's 2011 bestseller Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, & the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. McDougall's book set off something of a firestorm in the world of runners, a storm that has only grown with the passage of time. I know a few barefoot runners for whom this book is something of a holy text. I've never read it, but as this blog's purpose is the investigation of the "correct" way to run, this book is a natural place to start. 

The book is not terribly long, but as I'm now about 100 pages into it and I already have enough material for several posts, I'm going to review it in chunks. The first major review post will be up tomorrow. For now, I'm going to introduce the book and make a few notes about its style and my general impressions. 

McDougall is a former war correspondent who writes for magazines like Esquire, Men's Health, and of course, Runner's World. He's a pretty good, if pedestrian, writer. Born to Run is written in a first person, new-journalism style that works well for this story. The book weaves inquiry into injury-free running with the story of the Tarahumara, a native Mexican tribe that lives in seclusion and produces distance athletes whose exploits are the stuff of legend. McDougall actually traveled to the Copper Canyons in Mexico and met this tribe, as well as a cast of others who seem to defy the modern runner's reality of constant injury. 

The book is certainly engaging. You might think this is a boring subject, but you'd be wrong. McDougall's writing flows quickly and keeps the story moving. He weaves in a Quixotic quest to meet Caballo Blanco, a white migrant runner who is known to the Tarahumara, as well as other bits of barefoot and ultradistance running lore. Reading the book is fun and enjoyable, and it doesn't feel like you're slogging through a dense academic treatise (this book is not in the least academic, a complaint I'll return to later). 

Praise for the engaging narrative aside, McDougall's oeuvre as a war correspondent and journalist for masculine magazines is on full display in Born to Run. The style is conversational, which makes for easy reading, but also includes its share of cringe-worthy stylistic moments. On pg. 20, for example: 

Schwatka was no prissy Parisian poet, either; he was a U.S. Army lieutenant who'd survived the Frontier Wars and lived among the Sioux as an amateur anthropologist, so the man knew from mangled corpses. He'd also traveled the baddest of badlands in his time, including a hellacious expedition to the Arctic Circle. But when he got to the Copper Canyons, he had to recalibrate his scoring table.

Or pg. 35:

Not even the two toughest hombres in US military history were any match for the Barrancas [...] The result: Black Jack and Old Blood & Guts could whip the Germans in two world wars, but surrendered to the Copper Canyons. 

This kind of thing gets old after a while, and the book is full of it. My expectations (and taste) are certainly of a literary bent, but even taking that into consideration, I find the ultra-masculine bravado dripping from the words to be a bit much. Mostly a minor quibble, though, especially considering that I don't think I'm the exact audience this book is intended for, and it remains an enjoyable read.

So enough about style. Tomorrow, we dive into Born to Run, and we get the controversy started.

Coming up tomorrow: A Review of Born to Run pp. 1-100!

PureCadence Run #3- Also, Barefootin'

Pemberton on Wednesday (artist's rendition)

It was about 40 degrees on Wednesday, and a strange mix of snow, rain, sleet, hail, and what I can only assume was a new form of frozen precipitation. Slain, maybe. Rail. Sleow.

It was cold, is what I'm saying.

Man's Man Wil Dirkin headed out into the elements for a 7-mile run. I cowered inside with my tender feet and my treadmill. 

I decided to try to run 5 minutes barefoot to begin the workout. My reasoning was that most of this transition from regular shoes to the PureCadences is a matter of muscle memory. I have to re-train my stride so that I land on the midfoot without having to think about it. To that end, I thought some barefoot running on the treadmill would be a good way to retrain my feet. Since you instinctively avoid heel striking when barefoot, I thought that, in theory, I would be running with correct midfoot form without a lot of mental effort. 

I don't know if that was true. What I do know was that the 5:00 was painful. I started out okay, but by the end of the third minute or so I was hurting. The treadmill was set between a 10:00 to 12:00 pace, but I'm pretty sure that was a little slow. It felt closer to an 8:00 mile, even accounting for the fact that I might have perceived the run to be more intense without shoes on. 

My feet after the barefoot running

I got through my five minutes and then put the PureCadences on. That stabilized the pain level, but it didn't make it go away. Interestingly, I felt like my form was much improved with the shoes on. I was experiencing a lot of knee pain by that point in my right knee. Not pleasant, and with my knees, any new pain in there worries me. I finished up 10 minutes with the shoes on, for a total of 15 minutes running. 

I'm not sure exactly what caused all the pain with the barefoot part. It could have been too fast of a pace. It may have been too long of a duration. It might have been the treadmill; I don't know much about barefoot running at this point*, but I don't think they spend a great deal of time on treadmills. 

In any case, a few days off should fix the pain, and then it's back to the Great Stride Adjustment of 2013. With shoes on, this time.

* Which is going to change! I intend to be something of an expert on the subject of running physiology. Plenty of reviews, research, and video to come. 

Lumosity: Day # 3- A Rumination on Memory

Today marks my third day of the full Lumosity experience.

Today's Training Games
Spatial Speed Match (Speed)
Memory Matrix (Memory)
Familiar Faces (Memory)
Eagle Eye (Attention)
Chalkboard Challenge (Problem Solving)

Lumosity gave me a lot of memory work today. Surprisingly, that has so far been my worst of the five attributes the site focuses on (Speed, Memory, Attention, Problem Solving, & Flexibility). My best has been Flexibility, followed closely by Problem Solving.

If you asked me before this started, I would have assumed my ranking of skills would have been (from most-skilled to least-skilled) Memory, Speed, Flexibility, Attention, Problem Solving. That Lumosity suggests that list is exactly backwards is very interesting to me. I've never enjoyed math class very much, and that's always been the subject in school I had to work hardest at. I can generally understand Math as concepts, but the actual cranking out of computations is far more difficult to me. I make silly mistakes, confuse numbers, miss steps- in short, the general panoply of errors that the non-gifted mathematically tend to make.

That Memory is my worst skill so far is very surprising. I have always thought of myself as having a superior memory. I can recall exact lines from books I haven't read in years. I remember exactly what the apartment I lived in with my parents from birth until 4 years old looks like, from the layout of the floor plan to the color of the couch (a horrible brown amalgamation). I remember the color of my grandmother's shirt the time I went on a ride at the fair, got sick to my stomach, and she bought me ginger ale (whitish, with purple stripes). Lumosity really doesn't measure that kind of memory.

I am beginning to wonder if maybe we can distinguish Lumosity's conception of memory from what I think memory is: Lumosity memory is visual recall.Other terms for it might work as well. It's the kind of memory that helps you with math, or that helps you remember where your car keys are, or helps you to remember that trash day is Thursday and you need to take the cans out to the curb. It seems to me a very functional sort of memory, a practical ability.

My own memory perhaps should more properly be called sensation memory. I remember quite clearly the feeling of events. This leads me to remember minute details of those events which led to that feeling. It seems, though, that divorcing the pathos of an experience from its visual details renders it much less meaningful to me. Maybe emotion is the trigger that makes my memory work.  Those cards with the shapes on them don't affect me in any way- they're just visual stimuli. So I remember them less clearly. Perhaps my brain does not flag them as important, or maybe my memory requires a suite of sensations to construct a clear memory. This seems to me a very artistic type of memory. And that makes sense, because it's that kind of memory I tap into when I'm trying to write something. It's not practical, or useful, in the standard sense of helping you live your life. But it helps you to create, because it gives you a pool of sensation to draw from when you need inspiration.

Either way, my struggles with the memory games so far has been enlightening, and somewhat humbling.

PureCadence Run #2: Let's Go To The Videotape!

I ran 1.5 miles outside today in the PureCadences with an average mile pace of 8:27. A little slower than yesterday, but I tried to concentrate more on my form than worry about moving fast. Prior to heading out, I did a little bit of research into proper midfoot strike running form. The general consensus was that midfoot striking requires a shorter stride. Heel-striking runners tend to run at a cadence of 120 bpm (beats per minute, for you non-musicians out there), while midfoot runners run at a typical cadence between 180-240 bpm. Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" comes in at about 118 bpm; some of the faster death metal comes in at about 240 bpm (Morbid Angel's "Dominate," for example, which is a classic of the genre). Just because of that, I already like this midfoot striking thing.

Francis Bacon

Yesterday, I think my stride was a little toe-heavy. I felt like I was digging in with my toes more than letting my foot accept the impact. Today went much better. I slowed down, tried to keep my weight centered over my footfalls, and worked on not "reaching" with my stride. My left Achilles area got sore by the end of the run, but nothing major. After the run, I felt a little tingling in my right outer foot, which happened yesterday as well. It faded both times. I don't feel any difference in the ankle tendinitis pain as of yet. On the bright side, the stress fracture pain hasn't flared up, although even with my traditional-style Brooks Adrenalines on, the pain doesn't start until into the 2nd mile of a run.

Now all that sounds good, but how much do you really know how your foot is landing when you run? How much is wishful thinking? Opinion, in my opinion, is just a synonym for bullshit. One of this blog's heroes is Francis Bacon, 16th century English philosopher and a pioneer of inductive reasoning and the scientific method. Let's be more Francis Bacon-like about this.

LET'S GO TO THE VIDEOTAPE!

I used my mom's treadmill and my iPhone to take some footage of my stride and foot strike, both barefoot and with the PureCadences on. I then used Windows Movie Maker and some "acquired" Youtube music clips to compile the footage, add some sound and some slow-mo, and below you see the results. First, the barefoot:

Pretty straightforward. I see a fairly clear midfoot strike, without a lot of heel.

Now for the PureCadence:

This is a little less clear. Some strides look dead on to the barefoot strike. There's also some definite reaching in there, and some times when the heel is getting down a little too early. Were I grading this midfoot strike, I'd give it a solid C+. Clearly there is more work to do.

For some comparison, here's some high quality video with better slow motion (but much worse music) of midfoot striking:

I think my stride looked like that at times. Other times the form was less pronounced. My strike seems a little sloppy sometimes. Still, that's encouraging. I'm not far off. I can do the correct motion, I just need to improve my consistency, something that should come