It's Gotta Be the Shoes

One singular piece of news from week one. To quote Spike Lee's Mars Blackmon character:

It's gotta be the shoes.

In '01 to '03, I had increasing problems with my knees and lower legs. Tried various things, but what seemed to work best was to get out of high-heeled running shoes and into racing flats and other "low-drop" shoes. Over the next several years I ran a few thousand miles in these shoes; set all my PRs and had no injuries (other than a tibia stress fracture that I didn't even know I had until an Xray for my severed ACL showed the healed bone scar. And, oh BTW...I ruptured the ACL in my right knee in 2008. No surgery then or now. It seems to work OK.).

I developed a very good mid-foot strike. I don't over-pronate and these flat shoes felt and performed great for me.

I became a strong devotee of the minimalist running movement. High-heeled, badly designed running shoes were hurting more people than helping. But then my plantar fasciitis hit in the fall of '08 (just prior to the ACL rupture), and I adopted the standard cure of the minimalist crowd: Go even more minimal.

And this is the downfall of many a "movement." If it isn't working for you, it's not because it doesn't work. Because it works *by definition.* If it's not working for you, it's because you're doing it wrong. You need to do it more, and better.

Accepting this "wisdom" (despite routinely rejecting it in other parts of life), I got even flatter shoes, with even less cushioning. I went all the way to running in thin sheets of plastic tied up my ankle like a primitive sandal. Nothing helped, so I gave up and quit running.

Vowing to give it one more try, decided to take a radical approach and try the Hoka shoes. While still made with minimal heel-toe drop, they have HUGE cushioning. Particularly in the forefoot.

There is a certain ridiculousness to these shoes. The look funny, they feel funny. But, damn. They work. I went from zero to a 24-mile week with no leg pain, foot pain or other issues. I got tired, sure. I haven't run more than a dozen times in 5 years! But think about it...no running for 5 years and I easily clocked a 90-minute run on Sunday. Nice and slow, of course. But I got it done with nothing more than routine upper leg fatigue.

I swung my legs out of bed this morning expecting the familiar stab of heel pain from the PF. But...nothing.

The only downside now is that I need to resist the urge to increase mileage too quickly. I'll do another week just like last week, and then push the durations out from there. I plan to run 3 times per week, but those will be two 90-minute runs and 120+ on Sundays. Yes, I know the advantages of more frequency. But this is what I can schedule, so I will make best use of what I can schedule.

For me, the key to long-course triathlon running is long-run stamina. I've done best when putting more miles into fewer runs. "Real" run training is different, as is triathlon running for the fast folks that are winning age groups. They are trying to get fast; I am trying to hold a steady pace and not walk. Only when an athlete has the run conditioning to "not walk" should they worry about more pace.

I'll write more about this later from the perspective of the Daniels VDOT tables.