The Pod Squad

(This piece is for my book-in-progress titled See How We Run: Best Writings from 25 Years of Running Commentary. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from July 2007.)

USA Track & Field has picked a fight that is probably unwinnable as well as unnecessary. The sport’s rulers want to take away runners’ iPods and other music-players. If we don’t surrender them voluntarily, we can be disqualified.

Good luck with that. I see confrontations coming, both physical and legal.

This ruling reminds me of how USATF’s ancestor, the AAU, used to act. It once barred woman from long-distance races, and occasionally tried to remove them physically or penalize them legally for defying this edict.

The rationale was safety. Women were delicate and needed “protecting” from efforts this extreme. Women fought back and finally won.

The iPod ruling also is safety-based. But race day, when traffic is controlled, might be the safest time to run with plugged ears. The worst time to wear one is alone on a busy street.

This anti-iPod action doesn’t sink to the level of sex discrimination. But it does make rule-breakers of runners who don’t need to be.

As with the women of 40 years ago, runners will find ways around this ruling. They’ll conceal their iPods from the enforcers or find a race that ignores the rule. They won’t stop the music, except maybe voluntarily.

Forcibly removing someone’s iPod strikes me as wrong-headed. But giving a runner good, positive reasons to leave it behind by choice on race day is worthwhile.

A young runner on my marathon team wasn’t aware that iPods weren’t allowed in his race (which wouldn’t have enforced the rule anyway). Tim Cole always trained to music, but on Eugene Marathon day he chose to go without – and won his age group.

Tim is uncommonly wise and well-spoken for 19. He said after that race:

“It was the first time I had run without my iPod. This came from advice from the first marathon runner in my family, my mom. The experience of the race would have been incredibly tarnished by such artificial sound.

“In hindsight it was the quickest three hours and 13 minutes of my life. After the marathon, many of my fraternity brothers asked me, ‘What did you think about during the race?’ The truth was I thought less than I expected.

“I did not need to escape. I enjoyed being right where I was.”

I own two different iPod models, and love their sound quality and portability. On the campus where I teach, I’m one of the world’s oldest iPod wearers. A student once joked as I fumbled at the buttons beneath a jacket, “What are you doing, adjusting your pacemaker?”

Music, from a computer library that bulges with more than 2500 songs, travels with me much of each day. But the sound goes off when I go for a run. Don’t want it then; don’t need it.

UPDATE FROM 2015

The rare exception to the last line above is when I train extra-long for a marathon. I don’t have enough good thoughts to last all those hours alone and need some outside help.

But on marathon day I leave the iPod Shuffle in my hotel room. Wearing it would block out the live voices of race day, the exchanges with other runners and cheers from the supporters, which sound sweeter than any song.

[Hundreds of previous articles, dating back to 1998, can be found at joehenderson.com/archive/. Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Marathon Training, Memory Laps, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

Out and About

(This piece is for my book-in-progress titled See How We Run: Best Writings from 25 Years of Running Commentary. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from May 2007.)

A regular run of mine passes along a creekside path. On one side is a botanical garden, on the other a fitness center.

Side-by-side treadmills look out, through a floor-to-ceiling window, onto the creek and garden. Both treadmills are always occupied at the time I run past their users’ window to the outside world.

The treadmillers might be more fit than I am (and surely are younger, better dressed and better groomed). But I think while looking in on them that there’s far more to running than fitness, and they’re missing almost everything but their workout.

The run that touched off this column came on a springtime morning. The chilly air still carried a bite of winter, reluctant to depart.

But the day’s dawning came early enough now to let me see what I passed through and not just trust it to be here. This morning exploded with the sights, sounds and smells of the new season.

Treadmillers miss most of this. The climate and light inside their club never change. They hear the grinding of their machines, or the background sound of music and news. They smell only each other or the deodorizers that mask the aromas of human effort.

I applaud the treadmillers for their effort, which probably is greater than mine. But I wish they would step across the plate-glass window and experience the wider world of running outside.

Exercising indoors, and in place, is like watching the natural world pass by through a car window. You see it but don’t feel it. You’re apart from it, not really a part of it.

In the gym, every day is much like every other. Outdoors, no day is quite like any other.

I’m out every day of every week at dawn or before. I run most of those days. But even when the day calls for a walk, I’m still out at the same hour, in the same clothes and on the same routes, for the same length of time.

Running days never exactly clone themselves. Conditions of weather, qualities of light, varieties of sight and sound are forever remixing into something new. Without stepping outside, you can’t know exactly what freshness the day holds.

UPDATE FROM 2015

This one was for my friend Norm Lumian, who died in spring 2007. He was one of life’s ultrarunners, running for more than 60 of his 78 years.

Post-polio syndrome gradually took away the use of his legs. Anticipating his future, he adopted an unusual routine in the late 1990s: a run one day and a wheelchair session the next. No one I met on the streets and trails of Eugene appeared to enjoy mornings more than Norm, even as the speed and scope of his runs decreased.

The retired college professor often phoned to “grade” my columns and to “assign” new ones. He said late in his life, “Why don’t you write sometime about the simple pleasure of getting outside for a run each day?” Assignment completed, Prof.

[Hundreds of previous articles, dating back to 1998, can be found at joehenderson.com/archive/. Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Marathon Training, Memory Laps, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

On Your Feet

(This piece is for my book-in-progress titled See How We Run: Best Writings from 25 Years of Running Commentary. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from April 2007.)

How many pairs of running shoes line your closet or clutter your doorstep? If you’re typical of runners, you can count a half-dozen with mileage left in them. My current total is an even dozen.

And how many of those pairs feel just right? If you’re lucky, you can name one or two. I’d hoped for better from all of mine than they have delivered.

That’s why I now own 12 pairs, most with little or no mileage on them. Each represents a failed search for the perfect shoe.

Perfection might be too much to ask of our shoes, but we keep asking. We want them to give no trouble from first use to retirement.

Of course this almost never happens, so we blame the shoes for letting us down. (In fact, the previous chapter carries that title, with a question mark, “Blame The Shoes?”)

Even if shoes could be perfect, we can’t. Our biomechanical oddities and running excesses cause most of our troubles. Even the best shoes can’t overcome these imperfections and indiscretions.

This I know from having worn out at least 100 pairs of shoes since the 1960s. They weren’t perfect but were the best available at the time. The shoes and I ran hundreds of miles as if it were a mini-marriage: for better or worse, in lameness and in health, parting only when the shoes died of old age.

I haven’t quite averaged one injury per shoe change. But the breakdowns have come often enough to confirm the first of the following beliefs about shoes and their connection to healthy, happy feet.

1. Shoes are directly responsible for no more than half of running injuries. The other perpetrators are running too far, too fast, too soon, too often. Relief more often comes from correcting those mistakes than from changing shoes.

With a recent injury, I blamed the shoes worn at the time and replaced them. Later I forgave them and credited the same pair for my quick recovery. These shoes weren’t as bad as I thought, or as good. Readjusting the running routine helped the most.

2. We wear shoes on both feet. If our shoe choices were bad, we should hurt equally on both sides. Yet most injuries are one-sided, again pointing to a running error as the prime suspect, not the shoe choice.

Serious twin injuries happened to me only once, when calf muscles tore the same way at the same time on both legs. I immediately and permanently retired the shoes worn then.

3. The “popular” injuries go in cycles. Achilles tendinitis and plantar fascitis had their day; now it’s the I-T band’s time. Shoe changes that ease one problem can aggravate another.

In the 1990s the I-T band might have been an obscure rock group, so seldom was it mentioned. Now at least half the runners who come to me with medical complaints point to the outside of a knee. I suspect that the stability features in most of today’s shoes contribute to the I-T band epidemic by controlling too much the normal shock-absorbing motion of the feet and legs.

4. Shoes should be seen and not heard. A shoe that slams, slaps or scrapes is too hard or stiff, and it transfers the impact forces upward. A quiet shoe absorbs shock as it should.

Silent shoes let you sneak up on people. To avoid startling lone runners and walkers when coming from behind, I intentionally make foot noises to alert them.

5. The best shoe is the least you can wear, not the most you can lug around (and afford). The lighter and more flexible the shoe, the more it lets you run as nature designed us to run – barefoot.

As a kid who couldn’t yet find good shoes, I ran barefoot whenever the weather and surface allowed – and was never healthier. Next I ran mainly in flimsy racing shoes, and finally in bulkier models. The trend toward more and more of a shoe parallels my trend toward more and more injuries.

6. Barefoot running is impractical, but walking that way is the best exercise for keeping the feet healthy and happy. The next-best is wearing sandals or slippers that let the feet function naturally.

I like the Asian tradition of stepping out of shoes at the house door. Recently I’ve taken to wearing the plastic Crocs sandals outdoors, winter and summer.

7. A runner’s two greatest loyalties are not to any shoe company or model, but to the left foot and the right. You wear what performs best in your road test, not what the ads and shoe ratings say is best.

I’m not brand- or model-loyal. Only good runs in a pair of shoes can win my fidelity to a shoe, and then only until a better one comes along. The search for the perfect one never ends.

UPDATE FROM 2015

I resisted the minimalist-shoe and Five-Fingers fads of recent years. They offered too little protection for my old feet and legs.

The number of running shoes in my closet has dwindled to three, all worn in regular rotation. The clunky Crocs are long gone.

[Hundreds of previous articles, dating back to 1998, can be found at joehenderson.com/archive/. Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Marathon Training, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

Blame the Shoes?

(This piece is for my book-in-progress titled See How We Run: Best Writings from 25 Years of Running Commentary. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from March 2007.)

Sellers of running shoes love us runners. We’re quick to buy a shoe in the belief that it can make us healthier.

When that doesn’t happen, we instinctively blame that shoe and quickly replace it with a model that we believe will be better. We can run through several different types of shoes each year, not because they wear out but because they don’t live up to our hopes.

The longer we run in a certain shoe, the stronger the attachment to it and the greater the sense of loss when this pair wears out and can’t be replaced. This model often has changed or disappeared before we can buy the original one again.

Our search for elusive, and probably unattainable, perfection resumes. You know you’re a real runner when you have stocked a closet with failed shoes, with hundreds of unrun miles still in them.

The story of my running life has been the search for the perfect shoe. Every time, high hopes sooner or later yield to disappointment.

A year ago I found my almost-perfect shoe. This was an experimental Nike Pegasus that never went into production. It carried me through marathon training and the race itself, without any injury interruptions, for the first time in this century.

Last summer my search took me through three models from two companies (including the latest mass-produced Pegasus) before I landed in the Nike Hayward. While alternating week to week between two pairs, I stayed well – and therefore ran well and quit looking for a better shoe – into the new year.

Then came an injury – actually a pair of identical injuries, on each achilles tendon, for the price of one. This pain was more annoying than serious. It would ease enough to allow near-normal runs, but at other times of day I would stiffen into an embarrassing shuffle of a walk.

Instinctively and instantly I blamed the shoes. Must be the shoes. Time to try others – many others.

In less than a month I tested another four models from three different companies – New Balance, Saucony, Nike. The more shoes I tried, and the longer the achilles pain lingered without any improvement, the more I had to wonder where the blame truly belonged.

Was it really with the shoes? Or was it with the main culprit in running injuries – a flaw in the running routine?

Now I know that the Nike Hayward was guilty by association. The shoe wasn’t the main perpetrator this time. I was, for making a mistake in the running itself for the 99^th time.

The sore tendons wouldn’t get better until I made big changes in my running during recovery, then subtle ones later in the name of prevention. Changing the runs that cause or aggravate an injury is better medicine – cheaper too – than changing the shoes whenever our feet and legs complain of abuse.

UPDATE FROM 2015

I’ve all but stopped searching for the perfect shoe, and also mostly stopped blaming shoes for all that ails me. My usual shoe, the Nike Pegasus, isn’t perfect, but most of its models (they’re up to version 31 as I write) are good enough. My foot and leg health has stayed better since I’ve added more walk breaks to the runs and more walk-only days, and since I quit running races.

[Hundreds of previous articles, dating back to 1998, can be found at joehenderson.com/archive/. Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Marathon Training, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]