Barefoot on the Island

This weekend I participated in New York City’s First Annual Barefoot Run on Governor’s Island. I’m relatively new to the barefoot running movement but at the behest of organizer and champion of the modern Paleolithic lifestyle, John Durant, I signed up. After all, if he hadn’t introduced me to the Paleo Diet I’d still have love handles instead of a four-pack, eczema and psoriasis instead of creamy olive skin, and a drain full of hair after every shower.

The basic idea behind the barefoot running event is you take off your shoes and run around the island as many times as you can manage. At the tail end of the event there is beer, snacks, and prizes. Easy as pie! I was even able to convince my workout-phobic wife to join in (She in turn was able to convince John there should be barefoot walking group. Gotta love her!). I’m not a runner, per se, but I spend a great deal of time with high impact martial arts so I wasn’t too concerned with cardio (And with a paltry 2.1 mile circumference its easy to set goals.). The only problem would be getting enough sleep the night before.

I have to start a few nights earlier with several events and job opportunities that kept me from getting more than four or five hours of sleep a night. And being that it was Columbus Day Weekend my wife and I decided that it would also be a good idea to lift 300 pounds of Ikea furniture up our fifth floor walkup. Then, I decided it would also be a good idea to put the furniture together and then take a break by attending the scheduled Barefoot Running lecture by noted Harvard professor, evolutionary biologist, and proponent of barefoot running, Daniel Lieberman. I won’t go into the specifics except to say that we’ve been running without shoes or just minimal coverings for 3.5 million years until around 1970 so even by Young Earth Creationist standards this is not a trend.

Right around 11pm I finished putting together the shelving and rearranging the furniture. No biggy. We needed to be at the ferry by 7:10am which means, let’s see, no 1 trains to South Ferry this weekend, parking is expensive, take the R running weekends, carry the 1, okay, so, we needed to be in bed three days ago. Time for dinner!

We go out to eat because I can’t be bothered to cook and clean at this late hour. Around 12:30am we get home. Our cat is there to meet us. Her natural reaction to seeing us this evening is to have diarrhea on the rug and then throw up. Around 2pm we sleep.

This cat shit all over her ass.

The next day we take the train to South Ferry. I note that there are a lot of runners on board with various forms of those thick skinned, thick soled shoes much disparaged by the barefoot community advocates. Turns out the New York Road Runners Staten Island Half-Marathon was happening the same day (with around 5000 runners). Once I got to our ferry I noticed a very interesting contrast between the barefooters and the orthodox runners: The uniform of the

barefooters was nonexistent (One guy was wearing a kilt!) and the orthodox runners were dressed in their best and brightest brand name sweat wicking compression tights and shorts. As one barefooter put it the Marathon was the jock run and the Barefooter was the geek run.

And so we were.

Some people had arrived at the ferry barefoot. Most others were sporting the fashionable Vibram Five-Fingers, those strange wrap-around finger-toe shoes for which everyone who hates CrossFitters love to make fun. Hardly anyone was wearing the run’s major minimalist shoe sponsor, TerraPlana, even though they have made the distinct claim of being the first minimalist running shoe maker. My wife and I decided to take our shoes off after we got to the island location.

There was a decent crowd of around 250 people (Take that, Staten Island!). They ranged from all over the city and world, of all shapes and sizes and interests. There were mildly overweight people, super tall, skinny, geeky, tiny, young, and old. There were Paleo Dieters, Persistence Hunters (a subcategory of the Paleo Diet movement), and more orthodox runners who were transitioning to minimalist and barefoot running to protect themselves against future injury. There were celebrities of the barefoot world, like Barefoot Ted, Jason Robillard, Daniel Lieberman, and Erwan Le Corre. Quite an event!

I don't do mornings.

Personally, I wasn’t too confident about my barefoot skills so I placed myself at the back of the pack. The track runs around the island along various grades and conditions of asphalt. You don’t really think about the different qualities of asphalt until you are skin to tar. New asphalt almost feels soft to the touch (Well, not too new!). Once we started running I was surprised at how easy it was. I wasn’t heel striking. My landings were soft and I was letting my calves spring me up and forward thereby conserving momentum. I became so confident that I started arrogantly passing people who were wearing Vibrams, those wimps! I was bobbing and weaving, almost getting annoyed that these rubber sole clodded cheaters were running so slow. That didn’t last.

After the first quarter mile the new asphalt changes to older, rougher asphalt. A few hundred feet into it and the rough texture was starting to take its toll on the balls of my feet. Then they really started to hurt. I was stupid enough to stay on the inside track where all of the debris (you know, glass, sand, loose gravel, sticks and twigs) settles. The tenderness at my forefeet caused me to change my gate so I started landing more mid-footed to disperse the strike area. But then my whole foot started to hurt! Ahead a few yards I spotted grass! Yes! Soft ground! I nearly knocked over a girl in Vibrams (the wimp!) to get to the outer rim where the grass was. It was the best! The morning dirt was soft from the dew, the grass was cool and wet. I had never been so happy to run barefoot through piles of goose turds in my life! Unfortunately, those stretches didn’t last very long. I spent the rest of the circuit dodging from smooth painted lines to smooth painted lines (Some of the newer traffic lines are mercifully flat.). I muscled through the last quarter mile and stop. I had to put on my shoes.

I brought minimalist shoes that I have from martial arts training. They are very similar to wrestling shoes. By the time I got those on my group had left me behind and another group appeared running the opposite direction. It was the Persistence Hunting group led by Barefoot Ted. The idea behind this Persistence Hunting pattern was to simulate paleolithic people’s running patterns based on how they might hunt prey. Since there was no format I abandon the circuit and joined the hunters.

Barefoot Ted is lean and muscular and has a lot to say about the benefits of running barefoot (which he was) and simulating the activities and diet of primitive peoples. Our first leg took us to a crabapple tree growing behind a fence. Ted was excited by this find and jumped onto the fence to grab several. We all did the same and chowed down, just like the paleolithic man on the hunt might stop to gather some fruits or nuts for extra calories. The crabapples were tiny and lightly sweet and tangy and many of them were infested with worms. Hey! Extra protein! I ate around them.

We ran again. Around the circuit Ted joyfully informed runners he knew of the bounteous fruit tree down the road. It turns out he knew a lot of the other runners that day. I was getting the impression that I was one of the few people (if not the only person) in this hunting party as well as one of the minority of people at the event who didn’t know Barefoot Ted personally.

The other hunters in the party ran alongside him taking in everything he had to say in a very strange almost sycophantic way. He spoke of how quiet running barefoot is (He had to muffle his pockets full of change and keys to create the effect) and they were in awe. He made an ironic comment about the Coke and snack machines scattered about the island. Everyone laughed on cue. We all turned in unison like a school of fish. I made a joke about gathering some ice cream at the Mr. Softee Truck I spotted a few yard ahead.

Crickets.

Not even a patronizing laugh to acknowledge my existence. Okay. It was tough room. Maybe I was trying too hard (I’m known to do that.). Maybe I just spoke out of turn. I don’t know the protocol. And yet, lots of others were making jokes and laughing. Maybe I needed to make a couple of acquaintances.

At this point we’d ran up a nice hill and dipped into the mote surrounding Fort Jay and were heading into Colonel Row where several gorgeous Victorian styled homes were situated. I decided to make my move. I ran alongs

ide one of the hunters. “Check out these amazing Victorian houses!” Nothing. Okay. Maybe he was out of breath. I tried a second time with someone else. Nothing. Obviously, either no one wanted to acknowledge a passing comment about architecture (which I admit is way off topic) or the tribal mentality was very quick to manifest its most exclusive aspects.

I made one last ditch effort (third time’s the charm) noting to myself that I recognized one of the hunters from a Paleo Meetup event. I figured this is fair conversation topic and I mentioned it to him and his hunting partner. We introduced ourselves but it seems a little brusque. He seemed a little annoyed that I didn’t recognize his blog. It’s been featured on one or two other blogs that I don’t read! Come on! Then someone they knew came running our way. They yelled his name, peeled off, and I was left to my own devices. I decided next time I’d starting my own tribe.

I would like to digress for a moment. Anthropologists almost universally have this to say about hunter-gatherers and other primitive peoples: Almost without exception, they are generous, kind, and welcoming to strangers, in fact, surprisingly and disarmingly so. End digression.

To be fair I met some very nice and open people there. One of them I ran into directly after I left the hunting party and she pointed me out to my wife who had just finished their barefoot walk. She was chatting with the event’s cameraman and co-founding member of the New York Paleo Meetup group, Melissa McEwan. We all decided to walk the circuit once. Having the pampered feet of the aristocratic class my wife had already developed significant blisters just walking around barefoot so she put on her shoes. I decided to take mine off again. After all, we’re only walking, right? That was a mistake. By the end of the circuit my feet were on fire and I was doing much the same things walking as I had done running.

We made it back in time for the prizes. And boy were there prizes! It ranged from $20 specialty socks with toes to books about barefoot running to actual $150 TerraPlana minimalist shoes. The two top prizes were a free consultation with MovNat specialist Erwan Le Corre (his consultations are very expensive) and a running gate analysis at Harvard by Daniel Leiberman. There must have been 50 prizes for 250 competitors so the odds were high that you would walk away with something. Somehow my wife won socks and I won a book.

Some friendly barefoot runners.

This was John Durant’s first large scale event and I would call it very successful. He was able to gather so me very popular names in the barefoot running world (Erwan flew from France for the event!) and notable sponsors including TerraPlana and Tip Top Shoes. Its not easy getting an event like this off the ground, especially in bureaucracy laden New York City and he thanked his sister Maggie Durant profusely for her logistics expertise. Although the turnout was small compared to the Marathon on that other island I think the chances that this will attract a larger following and become a New York tradition is high. After all, some of the world’s top Olympic runners never wore shoes.