The Minimalist Transition

I am very much in the process of transitioning to minimalist running shoes.  I did too much too soon and got myself a super minor injury.  I'm actually glad I got my baby injury because it has pushed me to learn much more about running than Born to Run has to offer.  Born to Run is not about the technicalities of being a runner, but more about the spirit of being a runner and the biological history of human beings runners.

If you're making a similar transition, here are a few things I wish someone had told me at the outset.

Take One Day Off:  If you are like me, you might go out and try running on your forefoot and you might land a little too much on your forefoot instead of your midfoot and you might tear your calves up in the process and you might not be able to walk quite right for a couple days.  You might gimp around feeling antsy taking a day off because all you want to do is go back out and run for miles.  You might enjoy this new running form and philosophy so much that you start running every evening, even heading out at 6 pm when it's still 95 degrees outside.  Then, two weeks later, you might pull your ankle and be done for a couple weeks.  Then, you might be incredibly frustrated for doing too much too soon!

After a lot of reading, I recommend taking one day off in between runs, even if they're small runs.  The Wharton's Stretch Book explains that each time you work out, you tear up your muscles, and then they rebuild a little stronger.  If you work out every single day, your muscles don't have time to recover and get stronger, and you may injure yourself (like me).

Do Good Stretches:  Scott Jurek recommended the Wharton's Stretch Book in Eat and Run.  I went to the Wharton's website to check it out and found this great video about stretches for minimalist running.  This video explains the Wharton's Active Isolated Flexibility method.  I found the videos so useful that I went ahead and bought the book and I've definitely enjoyed it.  My ankle has felt great recently (I'm doing 1/2 mile runs every other day, but no further yet) and I'm not sure if it's due to purposeful stretching, but it might be!

Above is a photo of my home stretching tools: yoga mat, mens sock with a bag of brown sugar in it (stolen from boyfriend... had to buy boyfriend some replacement black socks), double loop around belt for a stretch rope (have since bought this one), dish towel, and small jar of coins to pull on dish towel.  This will all make sense if you watch the minimalist stretching video.

Run Barefoot:  So, I had written off the whole running barefoot thing.  It just seemed a bit too much, and terribly impractical for Dallas.  However, as I read about how to recover from an injury, I kept coming across people who said that barefoot running can do wonders for preventing and recovering from injuries!  A lot of people also support developing good form barefoot before running in minimalist shoes.

I decided to give it a try just to see what the hype is about and, I'm serious, it was loads of fun.  I only ran for 5 minutes.  I went to the Verandah where I'm a gym member because they have ridiculously nice grass that surrounds a 1/4 mile track (I considered using the lawn in front of Dallas Hall at SMU or one of the many parks in the Park Cities... all have really nice poke-free grass).  It really did feel fun and childlike, and there were muscles sore in my feet that I had never felt before.  Also, my ankle still feels great!  So I'm going to try it out once a week sticking with just 5 minutes for now.

For some more thorough and great advice on barefoot or minimalist running, check out this post at Barefoot Monologues!