Brujita Unplugged: “Afterwards, I pooped black for two days…”

Jenn Shelton took questions live online yesterday at Portland’s Mail Tribune. No surprise, the conversation went directions others rarely do. Jenn criticizes the sub-title of the book and what she feels is a romanticized portrait of the Tarahumara, but if she wasn’t insightful and out-spoken, I wouldn’t have recognized her. Archived video is at bottom.…

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Barefoot Secrets from Grunts and Seals

The key to light, easy running is rhythm, and that’s a secret that combat forces have known for thousands of years. Roman centurions used to cover 50 miles in a single night, running with one hand holding their weapons and the other on the shoulder of the soldier ahead of them. That kind of close-quarters…

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Better Running With the Barefoot Pro

I’ve been lucky enough to learn from a lot of excellent barefoot runners and natural-running coaches. Dr. Mark Cuccuzella in West Virginia and Ryan Miller in Boston are top-notch; they teach Danny Dreyer’s ChiRunning and are masters of making the technique easy to learn and remember. Ken Mierke, the Annapolis-based coach who developed Evolution Running…

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Breaking news from Nike: We’ve been talking a lot of crap, and selling it.

Or in the exact words of a study co-authored by Gordon Valiant, Nike’s head of biomechanical research: “Our current approach of prescribing in-shoe pronation control systems on the basis of foot type is overly simplistic and potentially injurious.” This is mindboggling and explosive stuff, and no one explains it better than Peter Larson. Essentially, the…

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Even GI Joe is afraid of running shoes

U.S. military researchers finally stepped in to settle the dust and resolve the running shoe debate. Their question: do running shoes cause the injuries they’re supposed to prevent? Their answer: Hoo-wah! Or as they actually put it: Researchers found almost no correlation at all between wearing the proper running shoes and avoiding injury. Injury rates were…

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