Christopher McDougall's Blog, page 21

Barefooting, Argentine Prison Style

"Since reading your book (of which I am a huge fan) I´ve done a fair amount of barefoot running. Currently I´m travelling around South America and have been keeping a blog about my travels and my running. This past weekend I had the pleasure of spending the night in an Argentine prison. Out of necessity the trip home from said prison was a barefoot run…."

This tale from "The Gobi Runner" is easily a contender for the best barefoot running story I've ever been told.

Return to the Running Lab

I recently had a chance to return to Dr. Irene Davis' biomechanics lab at the University of Delaware. Dr. Davis one of the co-authors of the Nature magazine study on barefoot running, not to mention an honest practicioner of her own advice: over the past few months, she's become a barefoot runner herself. As I describe in "Born to Run," I first visited her lab as a broken-down ex-runner who was trying to figure out why I couldn't seem to put together a few months of easy, recreational...

"How do we know what is true?"

"How do we know what is true? Evidence! Evidence! Evidence! NOT tradition. NOT authority. NOT revelation."

— Richard Dawkins, the great evolutionary biologist and author of "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution."

Barefoot Prof Explains…

A Q&A with Harvard's barefoot professor. Note how he zeroes in on the endlessly repeated "How come elite marathoners don't run barefoot?" question. As he, and so many other minimalists keep explaining, this debate is about technique, not footwear. Learn to run as if you were barefoot, and you're good to go — and go fast.

from the Arizona Daily Star:

E-mail Q&A with Daniel Lieberman

Are you a runner?

Yes, I love to run and have run regularly since I was a teenager. I'm not a very good runner in...

Preaching bare feet to shoe sellers

Back in December, I was invited to sign books at The Running Event, an industry trade show for running gear manufacturers. I bumped into Matt Fitzgerald of Competitor Magazine, who pulled me aside for this interview..

Nature's own running shoe

i'll be posting choice bits from the Nature paper along with commentary, but for now, the killer quote:

"People who don't wear shoes when they run have an astonishingly different strike," Lieberman said in a statement. "By landing on the middle or front of the foot, barefoot runners have almost no impact collision, much less than most shod runners generate when they heel-strike."

Barefoot Ted, doing his thing.

BTR, the Librarian's Choice

The American Library Association just named "Born to Run" to its Notable Books list for 2010.

Notable Books, 2010

The Ultimate Barefoot Site, aka Lieberman's Barefoot Bonanza

wow, the info is coming fast and furious out of lieberman's lab, now headquarters for barefooters worldwide. Harvard has set up the definitive how-to, why-to, since-when site for barefoot running. The Tarahumara secret now has Harvard's seal of approval.

Harvard's Barefoot Running site

The Shoemaker Scramble

it's been fascinating to watch the shoe companies deal with the overwhelming tide of science  that's been rising in favor of natural running. first, they were silent. then, they went with the silly 'everyone is an experiment of one' line. now, they're talking about 'whittling down traditional shoes.' why are traditional shoes the starting point? why not start with nothing, and only add what is needed?

National Geographic News