Project Superman: Prologue

On Sunday I sat down and wrote a long, thoughtful article about a recent fitness decision I have made. WordPress promptly crashed and lost everything I wrote. With frustration still simmering in my heart I will make this a short post about a long run. Basically, I have decided to start training for an ultramarathon.

For those who don’t know, an ultramarathon is any race longer than the standard 26.2 mile (42 km) marathon distance. Ultras come in all shapes and sizes from the slightly extended marathon that is a 50K to the nearly unfathomable 136 mile (217 km) Badwater Ultramarathon through Death Valley at the height of summer. The purpose of this new personal quest is to challenge what I think of as my personal limits. I want to push myself beyond the brink to find out what I can do when I break down the barriers that exist only in my mind.

The race I have my eye on is the Whistler 50, a 50 mile (80 km) run through the trails around Whistler Village here in BC. The route is appealing in that it is mercifully flat and made up of 4 laps of the 20K loop around the small mountain town. I really don’t know how I will fair, but that is what makes me want to try it. If you’re not pushing yourself, you’re not getting better.

I have found a training plan that will get me running 5 days per week with back to back long runs on the weekend. The program assumes that the person doing it has already run a marathon or two (I haven’t) and is able to run 15 miles (24K) as their long run on any given week. To make sure I was up to that level I went out on Saturday morning and knocked out 25K on trails at a lake near my house. It went well. Surprisingly well. I actually took 24 minutes off the time it took me to run a half marathon distance last time I tried. Since then I have been feeling good and obsessively reading up on ultramarathon running and watching videos from the best in the business.

In my first post, I promised this blog would cover my outside-the-box fitness obsessions. I believe this qualifies. And with that, join me as I embark on a quest that will undoubtedly result in intense physical pain and severe mental anguish. To keep me motivated I am calling it Project Superman.

Saturday run:

Raining and 12 degrees C at 6 am. Perfect conditions for a self-evaluation run.

25K later. Hungry and soaked, but feeling good.

Check out the stats from my big run here.

Cheers,

Steve

FiveFinger Follies: Some science and some opinion about barefoot running.

Photo by the witchery

One of the major downsides to having voiced an opinion about something strange is that people have a hard time forgetting what you said. That is especially true when the topic produces some kind of emotional reaction. Unfortunately for me, people have a strong emotional reaction to Vibram FiveFingers and I was one of the early adopters of the now infamous barefoot running shoes with an individual pocket for each toe. I’m not trying to be “that guy” who has to let everyone know he was onto something before it was cool, because FiveFingers are patently not cool. They are abrasively dorky in an age when nerd culture is mainstream, and that is really saying something.

I’m not exactly sure why people react so strongly to FiveFingers. I imagine it is a combination of 2 things. First, they don’t look like any other shoe you have ever seen so they stick in your mind like a misshapen piece of fruit or a memorably ugly baby. Second, when you see them you can’t help but imagine the feeling of fabric between your toes, and that sends most people running to the land of Nope. It’s a mix of jarring visuals and fear of new things, which any psychologist will tell you is a recipe for needlessly strong opinions.

That makes it difficult to be the guy who is on board with the weird newness. It is tiring enough to have to constantly explain to strangers in line at Subway what the deal with your shoes is, but it is a whole other bag of worms when the company that makes them publically settles a multi-million dollar lawsuit for false claims about their wares.  Since Vibram’s class action settlement was announced last month, I have been linked to articles about it about half a dozen times. “What do you have to say for yourself, now?” is the general subtext.

That leads me to the other problem with having opinions: people frequently mistake a willingness to discuss your ideas with defensiveness. That has put me between a rock and a hard place on the FIveFingers fallout. On one hand, the law and science junky side of me wants to engage people in a discussion about the biomechanical pros and cons of barefoot running and the uniquely American tendency to sue everyone for everything; on the other, I know that the people sharing the links don’t actually care and just want to feel like they got me worked up. The upshot is I am forced to act nonchalant and stifle my eagerness for intelligent conversation… Until now.

Now that I have planted my flag on this small corner of the internet I can say what I want and organize my thoughts in a way that leads me to well-supported conclusions. It is the perfect situation for a guy whose high school days were split between the debate team and cross country practice.

Whenever I try to sort out my opinion about Vibram, I default to a few questions:

1. Is there actual scientific evidence that minimalist shoes or “barefoot running” are better than conventional running shoes?
2. Would a reasonable person with average levels of common sense be justified in suing them?
3. Has buying their shoes had a net positive or net negative impact on my life?

The balance of this article will focus on answering those questions.

What does the science say?

Easily the most complicated of those three questions is what the science has to say about barefoot running in general and Vibram FiveFingers in particular. When you really dive into the academic research on the subject you are forced to balance articles that make exactly opposite claims about barefoot running before you finally find some line of reasonable information. Two quotes that really get to the root of the problem are:

1. “Running barefoot offers no metabolic advantage over running in lightweight, cushioned shoes” – Franz, Corbyn, & Rodger, 2012
2. “It was concluded that at 70 % of vVO 2 max pace, barefoot running is more economical than running shod, both overground and on a treadmill.” – Hanson et al., 2010

You’re really up against it when you try to research this. When the studies aren’t perfect mirror images of each other, they are often indecipherably jargon-laden:

“Significant variations in the forefoot adduction/abduction and rearfoot eversion/inversion coupling patterns could have little effect on the amount of tibial internal rotation excursion.” – Eslami et al., 2007

I could keep quoting ridiculous journal articles in a vain attempt to explain what is really going on in the literature, but it would take so long to define all the terms and explain all the research methods that if you actually sat down and read the whole summary your legs would have atrophied to the point of making the whole subject moot. Instead I’ll hit you with a bullet point list of the things that stood out to me:

• Barefoot running forces you to land further forward on your foot, to take shorter strides, and to land with your knees bent. This reduces stress and twisting in your joints. (Lieberman et al., 2010).
• Suddenly switching from running in conventional shoes to running in barefoot/minimalist shoes stresses parts of your body that aren’t used to it. You might get hurt if you try to skip a sensible transition period (Giulani et al., 2011; Ridge et al., 2013).
• Running in FiveFIngers allows you to react more quickly to changes in the surface you are running on because the thin soles allow your foot to more accurately sense slope variation (Squadrone, & Gallozzi, 2011).
• Choosing running shoes with different “cushioning technologies” based on the shape of your foot works in some cases (Butler, et al., 2006; Butler, Hamill, & Davis, 2013), but is totally pointless in others (Knapik, et al., 2009).
• Your body will unconsciously make changes to how you run no matter what kind of cushioning your shoes have. You will even change things up as your shoes get worn out (Clinghan, et al., 2009). So, generally speaking, paying attention to how you run is a lot more important than what you wear on your feet (Bootier, 2012).
• Minimalist shoes do allow runners to move in a similar way to those wearing no shoes at all (Lloyd, & Tong-Ching, 2013), but running in FiveFingers can reduce “vertical loading” (AKA impact stress) and reduce your risk of injury (Hutching, Maulder, & Burden, 2013).

(If you want to review the studies I’ve mentioned so far or other relevant ones that I haven’t cited specifically, please feel free to check out the links at the end of this article.)

To me, the conclusion that overshadows all the rest is that the technique you use to run is way more important that what you wear on your feet. Generally speaking shoes that mimic a barefoot, more natural running stride will nudge you in the right direction, but you need to use common sense and not overdo it right away.

My personal opinion is that, yes, you may be able to run totally safely in conventional running shoes, however I feel more stable when I am in more direct contact with the ground. Therefore, I will continue to run in my FiveFingers. If you are new to running, it will be easier to develop bad habits and harder to find the right patterns of movement if you encase your feet in foam. Different things work for different people, but that is my gut instinct after deep consideration.

Would a sensible person sue Vibram?

Frivolous lawsuits are a terrible thing. They waste taxpayer money and tie up the resources of the justice system. That being said, if someone has a legitimate complaint and was put in harm’s way by another person’s (or company’s) negligence, they are entitled to compensation. Sometimes lawsuits that seem like a waste of time are actually warranted. For example, the infamous case of the woman who sued McDonald’s after she burned herself while drinking their coffee was actually for the greater good of society and led them to adopt safer business practices. If you don’t believe me, check out the documentary Hot Coffee (It’s on Netflix).

So what about this Vibram lawsuit? In one corner we have a company that has provided me with a shoe I clearly enjoy. All cards on the table, I own 4 pairs of FiveFingers that I use for everything from canoe trips, to running, to walking around the mall with my girlfriend on a Sunday afternoon. In the other corner we have a group of people who feel they were duped by a large corporation. Vibram’s ads promised them improved strength in their foot muscles and fewer injuries. From where I stand, both sides deserve sympathy, but at the heart of the case is an issue I feel pretty strongly about. And it has nothing to do with running.

Critical thinking is an underutilized skill. Too many people go through life accepting what they are told at face value and not seeking out their own information. Clearly there is a problem if news networks or government organizations are spreading biased, one-sided information. However, marketing is an entirely different ball game. If you don’t expect to be told at least half-truths by companies that exist to make profits, then you are not making proper use of the squishy pink muscle you carry around in your skull.

No matter what an advertisement says, if you put on a shoe and expect to get a stronger foot without developing a sensible workout plan, you are asking for trouble. If you try to go from wearing pillowy Nike’s for your whole life to running 10K’s in what are essentially rubber foot-gloves, your injuries don’t fall far outside the realm of natural selection.

Lastly, no judge ruled that Vibram did anything wrong. They decided to settle the lawsuit to avoid a long drawn out process of bad press. I am not typically one to come to the defense of a multi-million dollar company, but condemning the scientific theory that is at the heart of barefoot running because a company decided to avoid negative publicity is naive to the point of foolishness.

That’s all I have to say about that.

Have the shoes helped me or hurt me?

There isn’t much mystery left leading into this section of the article so I will keep it short and simply share the story of how I came to running:

Growing up I always liked the idea of running. As a young Canadian watching Donovan Bailey win Olympic gold medals, I was inspired to chase my own glory. The trouble was, I was never all that great of a runner. I would do well enough at track and field meets at my own school but as soon as the competition got a bit more fierce, I was left in the dust. In high school I joined the cross country team thinking that if I couldn’t be fast, maybe I could outlast the competition. The trouble was, the more I ran the less I looked forward to it. Specifically, long runs hurt my knees; and after an unfortunate fall from a tall tree that has left me permanently susceptible to back pain, I had another reason to put marathon running on the back burner.

It wasn’t until I spent a winter in the Yukon working on a research project that I felt the need to try again. Spending a winter in a remote location, frequently snowed in and cut off from the world, I lost any residual fitness that I might have had. When I got back to my usual home I decided enough was enough. I had recently read about the benefits of barefoot running and had been wearing FiveFingers as water shoes for a couple years, so I threw caution to the wind and eased back into running. That was three years ago. Since then I have set countless personal records, rode the elusive wave of the runner’s high, and the only significant stretch of time I have not run was due to a plantar wart on my foot. I have not been injured in any significant way. My back pain even disappears if I stick to a regular schedule.

Regardless of what the people involved in the lawsuit think Vibram told them, the shoes have changed my life. I wouldn’t take my money back if they offered it.

So there it is, my extended rant about why I will continue to wear shoes that make me look like a doofus. Running shoes are a surprisingly complex and fascinating topic and the politics that are involved are almost as important as the technology. Obviously my perspective does not apply to everyone. All anyone can do is look at the evidence that is available, see how the options work for them, and try to make a reasonable decision. In the end, all that really matters is that we all keep moving and stay fit. With that I wish anyone who made it to the end of this post good luck and happy trails.

Cheers,

Steve

References and further reading:

http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/43/10/745.short

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08723.html%3Fref%3Dnf

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1934148209013677

http://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Abstract/2009/05000/Injury_Reduction_Effectiveness_of_Selecting.1.aspx

http://bjsportmed.com/content/42/3/189.abstract

http://ajs.sagepub.com/content/34/12/1998.short

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966636206001937

http://www.therunningclinic.ca/medias/mailinglist/2010-hanson-o2-barefoot-vs-sho.pdf

http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/21904278

http://journals.lww.com/acsm-csmr/Abstract/2012/09000/Barefoot_Running___Biomechanics_and_Implications.9.aspx

http://www.healio.com/orthopedics/journals/ortho/%7Bd2cb430b-2e12-4ba4-b255-78b5e4cddc63%7D/barefoot-simulating-footwear-associated-with-metatarsal-stress-injury-in-2-runners?full=1

http://unique-sportstime.de/site/wp-content/uploads/Barfuss-Laufen1.pdf

https://sonoma-dspace.calstate.edu/handle/10211.1/1512

 http://vc.bridgew.edu/mahpls_fac/92/

http://www.ejss-journal.com/phocadownload/anno2013/supplement_to_volume_1june_2013.pdf 

Garmin FR620: First Glance

A strong motivator for starting this blog was my recent semi-impulse purchase of my first ever devoted running watch. Last week on one of my lunch breaks I wandered into the Running Room at the corner of Georgia and Burrard in Vancouver’s west end. I was looking at the running watch display and got to talking with one of the sales reps. I got some good information about the Garmin ForeRunner 220, but the woman behind the counter kept eluding to a better, more mysterious watch. The big brother of the 220. The Garmin ForeRunner 620.

I left the store with new hand-held bottles for myself and my girlfriend Marianne (it is easier than having to buy myself another one after she steals it) and, after work, got into doing some research. The FR620 is not a cheap watch. It retails in Canada for $499.95 so I wanted to understand what it had to offer. It turns out, it has a lot. In addition to the standard stopwatch and heart rate monitor, the FR620 is a GPS watch so it allows tracking of distance, pace, elevation change and a host of other cool geographic features. It also measures VO2 Max (how effectively your body is using oxygen), cadence (steps per minute), and vertical oscillation (how high you bounce with each stride). After comparing it with other GPS watches on the market as well as to the significantly cheaper FR220, I decided to bite the bullet and drain my bank account. I did just get my tax return. That is found money… right?

I’ve had the watch for 4 days now and I’ve only just begun to play with it, but I thought I would at least share my first impressions.

Appearance/Hardware 

Out of the box you basically get 4 things: the watch itself, the heart rate monitor/band, the USB dock for hooking it up to your computer, and the quick start guide. I read enough reviews and watched enough videos before buying it to make the start up guide mostly useless, leaving me with the fun stuff.

The watch itself is impressively normal in size and shape. The reason I have waited so long to get a proper running watch (I have been running pretty consistently for 3 years) is that the ones I knew about were always big and bulky and generally not something you want on your wrist through a sweaty 10K. The 620 defies what I thought was possible for a wrist-mounted GPS unit. The diameter of the face is 1.8 inches (4.5 cm) and the thickness is only half an inch (1.25 cm). Compared with my outdoor watch (Suunto Vector) the 620 is light and sleek. The 220 has exactly the same dimensions but differs from the 620 in one very cool way. The 620 has a touchscreen, limiting the need for physical buttons to 4 instead of 5. The buttons (from top left moving clockwise) are for the backlight, starting/stopping/pausing a run, uploading workouts, and going back to the clock. The band itself is made of rubber and lined with holes to improve breathability and limit weight. In short, it feels good on my wrist. However, I am used to my much larger outdoor watch so if you are new to the whole multi-function watch racket, it might take some getting used to.

The heart rate monitor is also impressively subtle. I was hesitant about wearing something around my chest while running but having done a trail run and a hike this weekend and having forgotten to take of the chest monitor before driving home from the mountains, I can attest to the fact that it is comfortable and nonrestrictive.

The USB dock does its job, it’s small and easy to use. My one beef with it is that whereas the 220 comes with a dock that all but locks the watch in place, the 620’s dock is smaller and holds the watch only with magnets. One reviewer for the 220 gushed that he could swing the watch in the dock around his head by the USB cable and not have the watch come out, so I’m not sure why they changed it up for the more expensive version. It’s a small concern, though. I barely ever have the watched hooked up to the computer except to charge the battery, which lasts around 10 hours with GPS enabled and 6 week in stand-by (clock mode). The 620 also includes a wireless upload feature that lets you sync your workouts to the Garmin software with the touch of a button on the watch itself, so you don’t have to worry about pluggin it in or having it fall out of the dock mid-upload.

Ease of Use

It’s hard to say if the interface would be intuitive for someone with no background information on the watch, but given that this thing costs a significant chunk of money and given that most consumers will do some online research before making a purchase of this size, most people probably have some idea how to work the watch before they ever buy it. I was no exception. Reviews and videos like this amazingly in-depth one make the menus seem pretty intuitive. It is also nice having the touch screen so you can flip through things quickly and easily.

When I booted up the watch for the first time it asked me more my age, height, and weight as well has my preferred measurement units (metric v. the other nonsensical kind). When in stand-by it serves the purpose of a watch well, displaying date, time, battery life and all that jazz. When in running mode it locks on to satellites without me doing anything and it does it shockingly quickly. In the heart of downtown it took a minute or two the first time and at the trailhead on Saturday it took less than 5 seconds. I’m impressed so far. The date and time are also synced with satellites so you don’t have to change any settings in that respect. Plus you get to tell everyone what time it is in space.

Running

This weekend, one of my best friends (Arun) was in town visiting so the two of us put the 620 through its paces by running the Two Canyon Loop in North Vancouver, one of my favourite trails. Running with someone else is always a little tricky. They can be faster over one section of the trail while you are quicker on another. When they don’t know the route there are obvious pace allowances for unexpected gravel and whatnot. I was also playing tour-guide on the run, showing Arun waterfalls, cliffs, and suspension bridges. In short, it was far from a full-on, focused workout. Even still, the watch was super simple to use and recorded data reliably even though we were in heavy tree cover.

The one annoying thing I noticed was that the Auto Pause feature was a little out of whack. It left the watch running while we were stopped in a few places and paused the watch seemingly randomly in a few places. I turned it off halfway through the run and found the manual start/stop to be much easier and more reliable. Outside of that, the watch worked like a dream. The output on the Garmin software showing the map of our route and graphs for heart rate, cadence, elevation, and a million other things are clear, and fun to play with. That being said, I haven’t had a chance to dive into things really in depth yet; but at first glance I am blown away with the amount of data I got and how little I had to do to get it.

I will cut myself off there but feel free to meander through the pictures below recapping the run and summarizing some of the data. In closing, I am very happy with the watch so far. I plan to dig into the various features in future posts and I will update my reported fitness level when I have more data points. So, to paraphrase John Travolta, I don’t know if the watch is worth $500 bucks, but so far it’s pretty friggin’ good.

Cheers,

Steve

Showing a grateful friend a good time in the North Shore mountains.

 Shot of the trail with Arun in view. The boardwalk is a short reprieve from the gravel/roots.

Garmin Connect Dashboard. The first thing I saw after signing in.

An activity page for my Saturday run. The page also includes weather and device data (not shown)

Elevation and Heart Rate graphs. The many valleys on the HR graph denote points of interest on the tour I was giving.

Cadence and Vertical Oscillation. Measured using an accelerometer in the heart monitor. Data points are colour coded red (below average), yellow (average), green (good), and purple (excellent). Not making excuses for all the red points, but this trail has a lot of steep climbs and I was showing off cool sites along the way.

Ground contact time.

Yelling at the Moon

One of my favourite episodes of the TV show 30 Rock features a cameo by Buzz Aldrin and is called “The Moms.” In it, Liz Lemon seeks out the man that her mother could have married before meeting her father. That man turns out to be second-guy-on-the-moon, Buzz Aldrin and through a disappointing encounter with him Liz learns that her expectations for the perfect man might be a little out of whack.

When they finally meet face-to-face the exchange makes for one of the greatest scenes of any sitcom ever:

Liz: Excuse me, Dr. Aldrin. I’m sorry, there wasn’t a door, so I just…

Buzz Aldrin: I don’t believe in barriers, because I always break them. You must be Liz.

Eventually leading to…

Buzz Aldrin: Look, you know what your mother missed? Years of drinking, depression, cheating. I flipped over a Saab in the San Fernando Valley. Once I woke up in the Air and Space Museum with a revolver in the waistband of my jean shorts.

Liz: Oh my God. But you’re…

Buzz: A human being…

Liz: The moms were right. There’s no such thing as astronaut Mike Dexter. What am I doing?

Buzz: I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you. Would you like to yell at the moon with Buzz Aldrin?

Liz: Yes, please.

Buzz, to the moon: I own you!

Liz: You dumb moon!

Buzz: I walked on your face!

Liz: Don’t you know it’s day?! Idiot!

The reason I have chosen to share this with you in my first post on a health blog is because, obviously, I have stolen the idea of yelling at the moon for my title. Yelling at the Moon embodies three things to me:

First and foremost, it’s weird and silly and fun. Through my writing on this site I aim to expose any readers to new ideas in health and fitness that might at first seem completely nuts but ultimately lead to a more enjoyable and (hopefully) longer life. I also hope to share the things I learn in a way that is at least halfway entertaining. So there’s that.

Second, yelling at the moon is what Buzz does after he has conquered it. He doesn’t believe in barriers, because he’s always breaking them. I feel like that is one of the keys to a healthy life. Feeling invincible and like there is nothing you can’t accomplish. I firmly believe that one of the biggest barriers to good health is a person’s own mind (myself included). Another goal of this blog is to help me overcome my own mental shortcomings and break through the barriers I face in my own life, physical and otherwise.

Lastly, as Liz learns from the fictionalized and profoundly flawed Buzz, nobody is perfect. Human beings make mistakes. We eat things that are bad for us. We don’t exercise as much as we should. We post things on blogs that we believe to be true, only to be berated by fact-checking readers. The important thing is to accept that we will screw up from time to time and keep shooting for something to be proud of.

In this blog I will talk about my own health and what I am doing to improve it. That is something I have always tried to do in my life, now I am just choosing to share the details with whoever cares to read about them. I also plan to talk about interesting things I read and learn, even if they don’t apply to me personally. I will review books and gear and workout plans that I try out on myself. Above all, I will try to keep my posts light and fun and brief.

So welcome friends, family, and fitness-freaks. Join me as I put my body to the test. Feel free to leave ideas, impressions, and suggestions in the comment sections. I hope you enjoy the ride.

Cheers,

Steve