Today I raced my first 5k. Which is no big deal for some people. But it was a big deal for me for a few reasons. Three months ago, I was limping when I walked. A little over a year ago, I was on crutches and wearing a soft boot. But perhaps the biggest reason?
I ran the 5k barefoot.
I’ve had foot problems throughout my past athletic endeavors but during my second year of teaching (2002), my feet started to fail me. I went to a podiatrist and was fitted for orthotics. I hated them. The high heel insole seemed to put undue pressure on my forefoot, and they were so customized that I couldn’t NOT wear them without pain. Walking barefoot to the shower in the morning caused me to twinge. After a few months I gave up on them.
When I got to Africa, I had an injury that led to a diagnosis of neuroma in both feet (
which I wrote about in my first book All That You Can’t Leave Behind). The nifty solution to neuroma for me was metatarsal pads in each shoe. Well, again, these buggers change the muscle structure of the foot, making living without them difficult, but they helped me teach and play sports in Kenya.
Then came my most frustrating foot injury. During home assignment in 2010, we were living less than a mile from Mission Bay Park in San Diego and its waterfront jogging/biking trails. But in just our second month near the idyllic jogging locale, I tweaked my foot helping my brother-in-law move. The high-arch tweak turned into a limp, which turned into a soft boot, which turned into crutches. I was laid up for weeks. The podiatrist didn’t know what to tell me. It wasn’t broken according to x-rays. Yet all of the rest he prescribed and advice he gave brought zero improvements.
His legendary words in my last meeting with him? “You’re human. You should heal.” Like I said, that was my last time seeing him.
UCSD’s cross country coach (who attends
my home church in San Diego) told me about the doctor who works on him and his runners. He was a bit pricey and outside of insurance, but by this point, I thought I’d be in a wheel chair for the rest of my life. I had to try something else.
The guy was a chiropractor and he spent about an hour working on my foot in our first meeting (in all of my meetings with the traditional doctor, he might have touched my foot once). I don’t know technically what he did, but all of the work on my hips, knees, ankles, and feet led to him “unlocking” the injured foot. I walked out of there feeling 80% better. He promised that after one more session it’d be 100%. He was right.
I asked him what I should do if this all happened again in Africa. He wryly quipped, “Fly me to Africa.” His answer left me less than hopeful for the future.
Upon our return to Africa, I used what little time I had to exercise to lift weights rather than strain my sensitive foot. But a shoulder injury in spring pushed me back into running. Everything went fine. For a month or so. At about the same time, I found a best-selling sports book on Amazon Kindle called
Born to Run by Christophe McDougall. I bought it and started to plod through it in between essay grading.
The book essentially makes the case that the human foot evolved perfectly as a running tool (I’d say God created it perfectly, but everyone has his own belief system). It argues that Nike created its waffle shoes for running in the 70’s and convinced everyone that arch supports and lifts and molded soles were essential for human survival. And with that advent came the dawn of foot problems. Sure, some people wear shoes their whole lives without any problems, but for some people shoes themselves might be the problems. (The book also goes into the stories of ultramarathoning biggest stars, the Tarahumara Indians, and greatest race no one ever saw.)
Here I was, injured again with the same injury of a year earlier, hampered by continual foot problems in a profession that demands being on my feet for the next thirty years (teaching and coaching). Was it worth the time to take off my shoes? Absolutely.
I’ll admit. I was skeptic at first. People saw me walking short-distances barefoot, and then running short-distances, and they asked questions. I explained my experiment and my skepticism, but kept going. After a few weeks of slowly strengthening my natural foot (without the contours of a shoe), I jogged a mile. Then two. Then three. Then four.
No pain.
So that’s not entirely true. If I stepped on a pebble, it would hurt for a day or two. Or, if I had to wear shoes again—let’s say for church or a rainy day—then my shoes would hurt my feet. But I had no muscle/arch/neuroma pain from barefoot running.
That’s my barefoot running story. I raced a 5k today (rather than just jogging), and I was pretty proud of my time. 24:41
(Thanks to the Solid Verbal podcast for putting the challenge out there!) I’m not going to win any trophies or anything but 8:05 for mile 1, 8:09 for mile 2, 7:46 for mile 3, and a :41 final tenth was an accomplishment for someone with such bad feet.
Or should I say, bad feet in shoes.
