| Running_story |
I guess I've always loved running, since shortly after learning to walk. I just wasn't aware of this fact until we practiced distance running in high school physical education class. Before that, in grade school and junior high school, I thought, or at least was taught, that running was going as fast as you could for about 50 yards, then falling down on the ground gasping for air and feeling like you wanted to vomit. Is it any wonder that more children in this country don't like to run? Anyway, I grew up in a rural area of northern western lower Michigan. Running and bicycling was just how we got from one place to another. In the summer, shoes were a luxury that we didn't want to waste just playing around and barefeeet were more comfortable anyway. So most of my running was barefoot through the forests and on beaches around the lakes and ponds near home. While in college, I remember hearing the results of the local Bayshore Marathon in nearby Traverse City, Michigan, and was amazed that the winner ran each of the 26 miles as fast as I could run a single mile.I moved to California in 1980 and continued running. I ran barefoot on the beach sand, and wore shoes on the roads and asphalt bike trails. In 1987 some idiot at work convinced me to try running the Long Beach marathon. By this time I was already running up to 14 or 15 miles, so I agreed. By the end of the marathon my shoes had worn through a significant portion of the skin on my feet, and they had beat against the ends of my toes until the toenails fell off. Then I looked at that the soles of my feet. they were absolutely fine! I realized then that the bottoms of my feet were naturally tough enough to run without shoes, and that the rest of my feet were NOT tough enough to run with shoes! I continued running shorter distances with shoes, but if I ever wanted to run another marathon, I realized that it would have to be barefoot. I started running barefoot everywhere. I soon threw away my running shoes, and eventually got rid of almost all of my shoes. Since then, I have run over a dozen marathons (both road and trail) as well as a 50 Kilometer mountain trail run, and my feet have never had any injuries or damage as painful or as serious as those caused by my shoes in that first marathon! |
