Maybe my fate would’ve been different if I’d grown up like a Comanche child – playing naked in the forest until adulthood.  Instead I grew up a modern child.  Living in a city, playing in the alleys.  Always clothed and shod, except for bed and bathtub. 

As a teenager I went to the track and tried to run, but after 15 minutes, my shins would go numb.  I couldn’t lift my toes.  Landed flat and heavy.   “Frustration” might have been my middle name, or maybe it was “persistent” for I clumped along despite the disability, hoping the symptoms would resolve.  I wanted so badly to go fast and run far. 

A few years later, the doctor stuck needles into the muscles of my shins, connected wires to a bank of instruments, had me step onto a treadmill.  I took a few steps with the wires dangling from my legs — felt dizzy — had to stop and sit.  The computer malfunctioned anyhow, and the test was inconclusive.  But the swelling and numbness in my shins were unmistakable symptoms of chronic anterior compartment syndrome.  Next stop was physical therapy, where I stretched and strengthened and got orthotics for my shoes, but nothing helped.  I ended up on the operating table.  Long incisions in the fascia of each shin were meant to let the muscles expand. 

The procedure was successful.  I was so excited!

For the first time in my life, I started doing speedwork.  But almost immediately developed a burning pain alongside the outside of my knees.  No-one could tell me what was wrong.  No-one knew what to do.  Which was strange, since Illio Tibial Band (ITB) syndrome is one of the most common running injuries.  This time the frustration was overwhelming.  I quit running forever.   

In any case, with new job and young family, I didn’t have a lot of time.

Sometimes, though, I’d wake up early, even after a late night at work, and sneak off into the park for a morning run.  Intermittent ITB pain notwithstanding, over the years I logged some miles.  Did some races.  That child I used to be still hungering to go fast and long.

I ran a marathon with a mediocre time.  Ran another.  Screwed up my nerve, signed up for a 50k on Angel Island, after seeing glorious pictures of the San Fransico Bay.  During the train-up, I got a pair of high-quality custom-fitted orthotics.  The shin pain came back immediately.  I went to my sports doc in tears.  “Maybe,” he said, “You have too much support.”  He had me try a pair of cheap inserts.  This solution worked, and I was able to finish the race – in second-to-last place, incidentally.

I did more ultra’s.  Worked my way up to some big ones.  With Lisa Smith-Batchen as my coach, I took on the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon – only to struggle with ITB pain once again as I was cruising across the salt-swept flats of Owens Valley.  My crew chief, Lynn Hewett, who was an ultrarunner and an emergency room nurse, let me have a tablet of Tylenol.  I limped up to the Whitney Portal and finished. 

Two weeks before the Coyote Two Moon 100-miler in Southern California’s coastal mountains, I was back in my doc’s office, begging for Voltaren, a prescription-strength anti-inflammatory which had cleared up a bout of plantar fasciitis the year before.  This time it was the posterior tibialis tendon (PTT), which runs underneath the ankle bone on the inside of the foot.  He looked at me with a doubtful expression.  Allowed he could let me have two pills “as an experiment.”  I took one before the race and one half-way through and somehow made it to the end. 

I took some Ibuprofen during the 100-mile Beast of Burden in Lockport, New York, and afterwards visited a physical therapist for advice on a muscle strain somewhere in the groin.  She watched me do a set of exercises.  Observed that when I squatted, my arches collapsed, and my feet rolled inwards – “your navicular almost touches the floor.”  I was surprised.  I’d never paid much attention to my feet.  Had little idea what they were doing inside their shoes.  Why, I rarely looked down, except to check the laces.

In his bestseller, Born to Run, Chris McDougall raised an interesting question — if running is such a natural activity, then why are runners so often injured?  Could it be that cushioned heels, arch support, and protective soles predispose us to chronic injury by altering our natural form?  Would it help to run without shoes?

I loved the book, although I think his analysis misses the fundamental root cause of injuries: which is the thrill.  The wild enthusiasm.  The craving for intensity, which pushes us to move faster and go farther.  “Life is an ecstasy,” wrote the 19^th century American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Man is a jet of flame.”  It is our destiny to burn bright.  To flare out.  Sometimes to explode.

Nonetheless, McDougall inspired me to experiment.  I threw away the inserts and pulled on a pair of so-called “minimalist” shoes.  Stumbled off, knees knocking, groping for muscles I’d never used — and how my calves burned!  But shin and ITB problems disappeared, never to recur.  Today we know from studies that conventional shoes – like the big-heeled New Balance 995’s I wore as a kid – are contributory factors in chronic compartment syndrome.  Transition to minimalist footwear is recommended as an alternative to surgery.

In 2014, now in my early 50s, I went back to Death Valley in lightweight zero-drop minimalist shoes and ran the Badwater Double, a 294-round trip from Badwater Basin to the summit of Mt. Whitney.  Braved the heat.  Overcame the fatigue.  Sprinted the last mile.  Didn’t even get a blister.  The next morning, I woke up feeling on top of the world. 

But the PTT beneath my ankle remained an issue.  My next challenge, a thru-run of the Catskill Mountain high peaks, was a failure, and afterwards the PTT became a chronic problem.  I stopped speedwork and long runs.  Focused on my strengthening routine, which everyone says is so critical for running health, and strained the tendon even worse while doing weighted calf-raises in the gym.  Canceled all my races, except for an old favorite – the 50-mile Rock the Ridge, in New York’s Hudson Valley.  Training was going well, and my confidence was rising, when two weeks before the start, the PTT flared up again (noted in my training log as “condition red”). I decided to attempt the race at a cautious pace, and just to make life interesting, completed it without food or water.  For the next few days, I took some brisk walks for recovery and the ankle felt OK.  But when I tried to jog, the tendon cried out immediately.  The MRI showed a stress reaction where the tendon attaches to the navicular.  The dreaded boot was not deemed necessary, but my doc said no running for 3 months.   3 months later, the tendon still hurt, even walking on a treadmill, and 3 months after that it still had not healed.  I turned to a non-traditional treatment called extracorporeal shockwave therapy.  There was some improvement.  And some relapses.  By the time I was back in running trim, two years had passed, and the peak of my ultra-running prowess was gone.

That was 10 years ago. 

Today, to my surprise, I’m still going.  Earlier this year I won my age group at the Haltom Stampede, a local 5k in Haltom City, and to my great delight took home a buffalo-shaped trophy.  Two weeks later, I ran the Fort Worth Cowtown Marathon, and while my time was not particularly fast, I got so much positive energy from the crowds.  “Go barefoot cow!” the kids were squealing, while adults shouted “respect” and “badass” and “keep mooovin’.”  You see, I ran the Cowtown barefoot.  Wearing a cow costume.  It was my 24th barefoot race of marathon/ultra distance, following the 87 I did in shoes.

I started experimenting with barefoot after reading Born to Run, which is about the time the PTT was becoming problematic.  I thought it was time to invest in myself.  To develop the natural form that I should’ve learned as a naked barefoot child.  Plus it occurred to me, some slower-paced and shorter training might make sense for an ambitious athlete who was no longer young.  Once I got used to it, the surprise was that barefoot was so much fun.  Provided there wasn’t too much gravel. 

Now barefoot did not make me bullet proof.  To my long list of injuries, you can add proximal hamstring tendinitis and an irritated meniscus (which stung so bad, I couldn’t sleep) – although interestingly, those injuries occurred while training in shoes. 

There’s another root cause for injuries — the aging process.  I’m working on a solution for this one, too, although without a permanent solution quite yet — but in the meantime, my plan is to stay as natural as I can, for as long as possible.

Today, running feels so loose and easy.  No pounding.  Only the sensation of the ground.  Whether trotting on roads, a grassy trail, a treadmill, or the track — or racing as hard as I can for those silly trinkets which mean so much to me — I land comfortably on forefoot or the outer edge of my heels and roll off onto the big toe.  My feet no longer collapse, and my PTT has been completely happy for several years now.  The key seems to be core engagement, which barefoot teaches, and which is so easy to lose in a shod and sedentary environment. 

True, rough surfaces exact a toll.  Gravel can be so painful it’s hard to walk on.  Once, during a marathon in the LBJ Grasslands outside Dallas (beautiful sandy trails through forests of post oak and juniper and grassy meadows), I stepped on a thorn.  Limped around for a day until I pulled it out with a pair of tweezers.  But when the coast is clear, the feeling of light-footedness is amazing. 

I’d like to keep going a little longer. 

I want to run naked in the forest like the Comanche child I never was.

References: 

S. C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, 2011

Roth J, Neumann J, Tao M. Orthopaedic Perspective on Barefoot and Minimalist Running. J Am Acad Orthop Surg. 2016 Mar;24(3):180-7. doi: 10.5435/JAAOS-D-14-00343. PMID: 26808173.

Chris McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, 2011

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