Step 1 – Sign a contract to write a book. The work involved will stress you to your breaking point and suck away any motivation you might have to exercise. Also, writing requires a lot of sitting, so your degree of slothfulness will increase exponentially! And let’s not forget the stress-eating!

Step 2 – Watch the pounds accumulate on your formerly healthy frame. Become disgusted by the decline in your physical fitness. Reach a peak of ill health just before your book is released.

Step 3 – Finish said book and rediscover the world beyond your computer monitor. Wow, that’s what it feels like to enjoy running? Who knew!

Step 4 – Watch the weight melt away from your now unhealthy body as you once again start exercising in large amounts and eating better food.

As an example, here’s my weight profile for the past several months as recorded on my Withings scale (I love that thing!) – note that my book came out around June 1:

Now, you might say this isn’t really a weight loss plan as much as a weight gain then loss plan back to square one, but I’m not going to quibble about silly details. I’m sticking to my guns on this one – if you want to destroy your health for a period of time, write a book. Then, when you’re done you’ll appreciate more than ever what it’s like to be able to eat well and exercise regularly!

In all seriousness, I’m really glad that I wrote Tread Lightly, but man am I happy it’s done – writing a book is not good for your health.

Here’s an excerpt:

Phil: What first caught my eye in Tread Lightly was the way you examined the whole supination/pronation paradigm and found that there is absolutely no conclusive evidence that it should be used as a means for shoe fitting. What spurred you to look at that critically?

Peter Larson: When I started running seriously five years ago, I went to a specialty running store and got fitted for shoes by having the [salespeople] watch me run across the store 10 feet. They said, “You’re a mild pronator – you should probably have some stability in your shoes.” I didn’t think anything about it at the time. I wore some variant of a stability shoe for about two years, and then I read Born to Run. That kind of got me wondering if there is really a lot of science behind this whole business. And I bought a pair of Nike Frees. That was kind of my first exploration with less shoe. I ran in them, and I was just amazed by how much lighter and more flexible they were.

The fact that I was able to run in them, even though I was told I needed a stability shoe, led to one thing after another and I came to find that there really isn’t a whole lot of good science supporting the whole paradigm that we should fit people based on how much they pronate. [Then] you get to talking to people like Jay Dicharry (who runs the SPEED Lab at the University of Virginia) and you find that arch height is pretty meaningless when it comes to fitting shoes because what the arch does when you run is very different than what it does when you stand.

You can read the full interview here, and there is much more detail on the pronation control shoe-fitting paradigm in Chapter 6 of my book.

Ah, the good old days of running.  Runners hear that line a lot, usually from those who started running in the 1960s and 1970s.  Was there really a golden age of running when runners seldom came up lame from an injury? Or is this a mere fiction, an invention or reordering of memory? By the same token, there’s that uncomfortable feeling that running injuries are a modern problem, a byproduct of cushioned shoes with lifted heels, and that runners in the stripped-down shoes of the earlier era were somehow immune to the injury bug. Unfortunately, the truth is not quite that simple.

In his 1935 book “Running,” Arthur Newton includes an entire chapter titled “Troubles.” In the opening paragraph of the chapter, Newton writes the following about running injuries:

“…real intensive training can produce an amazing crop, at any rate during the early stages. If you have nothing else to brag about you can admire the heterogeneous assortment of brand new and unexpected “aggranoyances” it showers promiscuously around. To hint at only a few… blisters, cramp, stitch, colds, uneasy joints, and sinews together with their accompanying holocaust of invigorated language…”

Clearly Newton was more than familiar with what it’s like to be an injured runner! It must be remembered, however, that Newton was also known to occasionally log well over 200 miles of running per week while in his 40s on rough South African roads – this type of mileage is likely to cause problems for anyone. Furthermore, despite his own masochistic mileage totals, he believed that running was less likely to cause injury compared to other athletic pursuits if “you indulge in moderation only.” A perceptive student of human behavior, Newton also addressed how to manage injuries, humorously reporting that there are “remedies which sportsmen have employed all along and which certainly work wonders… (a) grouse, and (b) persistence in regarding them as a joke.”

Running injuries are nothing new, which means that the shoe company giants can hardly be ascribed sole blame for the current plague of running woes. However, detailed accounts of injuries are difficult to come by prior to the 1970’s. It wasn’t until the early 1970s that more systematic documentation of running injuries became commonplace, and much of this early work came in the form of injury surveys conducted by a relatively new magazine (at the time) called Runner’s World.

In 1980, highly respected running biomechanist Peter Cavanagh (currently the Endowed Chair of Women’s Sports Medicine at the University of Washington) wrote a book titled The Running Shoe Book. In it, Cavanagh, who set up and directed the first shoe test lab for Runner’s World, cited the 1971 results of the magazine’s first reader survey of injuries. A total of 800 runners responded to the survey, and each reported the types of “major” foot and leg injuries they had sustained – “major” was defined as “requiring a complete layoff from running.” The five most common injuries reported were:

1. Knee injury (17.9%)

2. Achilles Tendon injury (14%)

3. Shin Splints (10.6%)

4. Arch injury (6.9%)

5. Ankle injury (6.4%)

Runner’s World’s survey was conducted again in 1973; 1,680 runners reported a total of 1,600 injuries (some runners reported more than one). The top five injuries were:

1. Knee injury (22.5%)

2. Achilles Tendon injury (20.3%)

3. Shin Splints (9.9%)

4. Forefoot injury (7.2%)

5. Heel injury (7.2%)

Cavanagh pointed out that “the shoes used by runners in the 1971-1973 period were lacking in what we now believe to be important protective characteristics,” and that shoes from this period “were heavy, thin under the forepart, lacking in shock absorption, and provided a relatively small differential in height between the heel and forefoot.” As an example of such a shoe, Cavanagh reports that the second most popular shoe in 1971 was the adidas Olympia, which weighed over 12 ounces and had a gum-rubber sole with no midsole or heel wedge.

Cavanagh went on to cite 1979 injury statistics for 974 runners provided by the Runners Clinic of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Massachusetts. The top five common injury types were:

1. Knee injury (30.5%),

2. Heel Spur Syndrome (includes plantar fasciitis; 13.5%)

3. Shin Splints (10.9%)

4. Muscle pulls (8%)

5. Achilles tendonitis (6%)

Cavanagh acknowledged the inherent limitations of the available data (for example, surveys vs. clinical data as well as injury terminology differences), but it was the best available data from that time period, and he made several interesting observations about how injury patterns changed from the early to late 1970s (a time when both running shoe design and runner demographics experienced dramatic changes).  Cavanagh noted that within the span of ten years, Achilles tendon injuries, metatarsal stress fractures, ankle injuries, and heel bone injuries became less common, whereas knee injuries, shin splints (he combined shin splints and posterior tibial tendonitis percentages for 1979 since he felt that earlier surveys probably included both of these under the category “shin splints”), heel spur syndrome, and leg fractures (mostly tibial and fibular stress fractures) became considerably more common.

Even though knee injuries were the most common injury in each of these studies, Cavanagh was particularly concerned about the rising incidence of knee injuries in 1979. What caused this spike? He speculated that “the combination of poor skeletal alignment and high mileage is going to play its part in knee injuries,” but also indicated that “we also have to examine the proposition, however unpalatable, that shoes, far from preventing injuries, have been partly responsible for them.”  How might this happen? Cavanagh felt that lifting and adding cushioning material under the heel might have helped alleviate Achilles tendon and heel injuries, but that a potential side effect of adding a heel wedge was “inferior rearfoot control.” In other words, excessive pronation, the inward roll of the foot that occurs after ground contact, might have been the culprit that was increasingly damaging runner’s knees as the decade progressed, and it might have been caused by the added elements in shoes that were put there in part to protect runners from Achilles tendon and foot problems

In addition to alterations in shoe construction and the shift in frequencies of injury types, the profile of the average runner changed significantly during this period. By the end of the 1970s, running had become far more of a mainstream pastime. Amby Burfoot, editor-at large for Runner’s World and winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon, says that the “1970 runner was leaner, meaner and faster than the 1980 runner… virtually all (1970) runners were those who continued (running) from high school, college, military service. They were more talented and more closely connected to recent high-level fitness.” In contrast, Burfoot points out that the average runner in 1980 was an individual “still in relative youth who picked up running after reading Jim Fixx’s book, and began training hard. They might have put in a lot of miles, but many were inherently not that talented as runners when compared to the average runner of 1970.” So the population of runners changed from mostly lifelong athletes to individuals who might have been joining the sport for the first time or who were returning to running later in life. Injury studies have shown that new runners are more likely to succumb to injury, so it’s quite possible that this demographic shift contributed to the changing nature of running injuries over the course of the decade; but to what extent is difficult to estimate with any degree of certainty.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the development of running shoes went from being mostly an ad hoc, improvisational, affair to one that was heavily influenced by emerging footwear science and research. “Running shoes came out of the dark age,” wrote Cavanagh, and shoe design as it relates to injury prevention became a topic of intense study by biomechanical researchers. One of the main concerns during this period was how to control excessive movement of the rearfoot, or what we now commonly refer to as “pronation control.” The logic went like this: if the raised, cushioned heel of running shoes compromised rearfoot control, and this in turn contributed to the rising incidence of knee injuries, then something needed to be done to stabilize shoes and correct for this.

Thus began the “pronation-control paradigm” that would guide shoe design for decades to follow. Shoes now required structural elements whose intended purpose was to limit the amount of pronation that occurred after the foot made contact with the ground, most often on the outer portion of the heel. The hope was that by keeping excessive pronation in check, the number of knee injuries experienced by runners would be reduced. Over the next 30 years, devices like medial posts, dual density midsoles, flared heels, and rigid heel counters were introduced in a continuing attempt to control potentially harmful movements of the foot that may have been caused by the construction of the shoe itself (mainly their soft, compressible midsoles). These are the very same elements that are found in many modern running shoes; in fact, level of pronation control continues to be the primary factor by which shoes are classified by manufacturers and in most stores today.

There is a lot more to say about the pronation-control paradigm, and we will cover it further in Chapter 6, but for now the most important question to address is this: what has been the effect of this added shoe technology on injuries?

You can read our attempt to answer this last question in Tread Lightly: Form, Footwear, and the Quest for Injury Free Running.

Bliss Carman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Animal motion is good through being instinctive and free, and our own motion can only become graceful when those qualities are ensured for it.”

-Bliss Carman, The Making of Personality, 1908

In my previous post I shared several passages about “barefoot shoes” from a 1908 book titled The Making of Personality by Canadian poet Bliss Carman. I’ve been reading a bit more of the book, and in a chapter titled “Rhythms of Grace,” Carman once again writes about a topic that has been oft discussed amongst runners in recent years: form. Carman has a beautiful writing style, and the following passage is particularly good – I really like the part about the development of form in children:

Here is another great passage – particularly relevant to any discussion about how to change one’s running form:

I couldn’t agree more!

“…no material comfort can equal the luxury of a well fitting, broad-toed, flexible, heelless shoe. Of course, the secret is that a good barefoot shoe enables us to walk naturally and to find in simple natural exercises not only health, but sanity and happiness as well. If I were a fairy and asked to bestow one gift on the man and woman of the twentieth century I would give them each a pair of model shoes.”

–Bliss Carman, 1908

Before I start this post, I’d just like to express how much I love this quote! The image of a shoe fairy just makes me happy. Ok, now on with it.

One of the things I enjoyed most about writing my own book was digging through old books on running. I spent a lot of time poking around on Google Books and borrowing old books via interlibrary loan in the hope of finding interesting tidbits about footwear and running form. I discovered that a lot of what we are debating now in these areas has been discussed in books for quite a long time.

A few days ago I got a message from a colleague in the Psychology Department at my college (he is also the cross-country coach) indicating that he had found an old book in his collection that had a chapter that talked about the “beauty of the foot.” The book is titled “The Making of Personality,” and it was published in 1908. The author, Bliss Carman, was a Canadian poet, and was Canada’s poet laureate in the early 1900’s.

Earlier tonight I read the chapter on the foot and was pretty amazed to see references to “barefoot shoes” from over 100 years ago! Read the following pages – it’s as if they could have been plucked directly from any number of blog posts written by minimalist advocates over the past few years (the Google Books embed feature is pretty sweet!):

There is a lot of additional interesting content in the chapter, and there are a few additional chapters in the book that I plan to read as well – one on graceful movement, and another on the virtues of being outdoors. Sometimes going back to these old books really puts things into perspective – there is a simplicity and clarity in the writing that often gets lost in many contemporary books. One thing that this book reminds us of with specific regard to shoes is that ill-fitting footwear is not a modern problem. Yet, over 100 years later we are still battling fashion for the health of our feet. Truly strange, isn’t it?

If you want to take a look at Bliss’s book, the full text is available on Google Books (I’ve also embedded the full text at the bottom of this post).

I’ll leave you with a few more quotes that I particularly liked – enjoy!:

“The modern shoe with its toe and high heel may be interesting as a bric-a-brac, as all human fashions are interesting however extreme or bizarre; but its comparative uselessness, its lack of anything like perfect fitness to meet the demands which be put upon it, make it essentially an inartistic invention. As long as it remains so artificial in shape and so ill adapted to its requirements, it can never be a really beautiful foot-covering. It is little less than an instrument of torture, and we wince at realizing it.”

“Whenever the foot is liberated from its fashionable bondage, it returns to the glad service for which it is formed; and all its added freedom and exercise bring back its lost suppleness, strength and grace It grows sensitive and mobile and adequately serviceable again, and so again become interesting and beautiful with the beauty of life. A withered member be it hand or foot cannot be made lovely by being encased in expensive trappings.”

“The hand or foot – or the whole body for that matter – cannot be kept beautiful by disuse. It was designed for use for motion not for immobility. It attained its present normal beauty its present formation through constant service and motion and only by being used freely and lovingly can its beauty be preserved and perfected.”

Bill’s initial idea was for me to write the book and he would serve as editor and agent (which he has done for several books by Phil Maffetone), but in our conversations we came up with a concept that was going to be more than I could handle on my own given time constraints associated with my day job and being a father of three little kids. So, we agreed to co-author a book and divided up the topics that we wanted to hit upon. After a sometimes grueling process (as I hear any book-writing experience can be), Bill and I finally finished our book last month (which involved a marathon editing session while I was on vacation with my family in Disney World!).

The end product of our labors is a book titled Tread Lightly: Form, Footwear and the Quest for Injury-Free Running. The content will not come as a surprise to readers of this blog (or Bill’s Zero Drop blog). We basically address the question of why modern runners so often get hurt. We don’t pretend to provide an answer that will “cure” running injuries, but we do take what we feel is a fairly balanced look at topic as it relates to form, footwear, and food (and much more). This is by no means a barefoot running book (far from it!), or even necessarily a minimalist running book. Rather, it is a book that attempts to look at how modern humans differ from our running ancestors, what both history and modern science tell us about form, footwear, and injuries, and how this knowledge might be applied to reduce your chances of getting hurt. A lot of the questions we address still have incomplete answers, but our hope is that our writing will stimulate continued thought, research, experimentation and discussion.

Over the coming weeks you will hear more about this book, and I’ll likely post a few excerpts leading up to the official release date (June 1 according to Amazon, but could be a few weeks earlier if the current schedule holds. For now, I’ll provide the chapter titles to give you a feel for the breadth of topics that we cover:

Introduction – Pete’s Story and Bill’s Story

Chapter 1 – The Evolution of Running in Humans

Chapter 2 – Running Injuries: Why They Happen

Chapter 3 – Barefoot and Running

Chapter 4 – The Running Shoe

Chapter 5 – The Recreational Runner

Chapter 6 – Pronate Nation

Chapter 7 – Foot Strike

Chapter 8 – The Running Stride

Chapter 9 – Turning the Clock Back on Nutrition

If you are interested in pre-ordering a copy of Tread Lightly, you can do so on Amazon.com. I don’t have official confirmation that a Kindle version will be released, but I assume that this will happen (I read most books on the Kindle app on the Iphone these days, so I plan to push for it). If you’d like to help this process along, you can go to the Amazon page for Tread Lightly and click on the “Tell the Publisher: I’d like to read this book on Kindle” link just below the cover photo.

Thanks to all of you who read this blog and have offered your support over the past few years – I owe much of the thought process that led to the book’s evolution to discussions that I have had here!

Below are the front and back covers of Tread Lightly: