Barefoot Boy, With Cheek of Tan

Lately, the hysteria surrounding running barefoot has been reaching decibels usually associated with a Shuttle launch. Everywhere we turn there are lectures being given on barefoot running and articles cropping up that require the cutting down of whole forests of trees to make wood pulp for paper. The phenomenon is also spilling over into the world of regular-walkingaround-type folks, who are inquiring, “What’s with all this barefoot stuff, anyway? Is it a promotion for taking a vacation at a beach resort?”

The craziness began, of course, when some journalists looked past the dramatic story of the race Caballo Blanco (the White Horse) was putting together between some Tarahumara runners and a small contingent of Anglo ultrarunners as described in Chris McDougall’s excellent bestseller Born to Run and glommed onto chapter 25, where Chris discussed barefoot and minimalist running. The chapter made a convincing case that overengineered running shoes potentially were a cause of runner injuries—evil big-profitrunning-shoe villains versus the naive little guy, perfect fodder for an expose. And there is a case to be made that an overengineered running shoe, replete

with features the average foot does not need, can contribute to eliciting the exact opposite outcome anticipated, meaning more injuries.

Rich Englehart railed against overengineered running shoes in these pages more than a decade ago, instead championing training in what amounted to racing flats—the bare minimum of foot covering arunner could get away with. The kind of running shoes (like the Tiger Cortez and the Nike Waffle Trainer) that were revolutionary in the 1970s when training shoes for long-distance runners were first introduced. Before science and marketing became involved, requiring twice a year that new models feature space-age gobbledygook improvements that had little if anything to do with running. These changes addressed very little that was actually going on with the human foot in the process of running, but they made good ad copy and impressed the novice runner with the obscene comfort he or she felt when slipping on the newest model. “I feel like I’m standing ona cloud,” the new runners would enthuse. “T can’t feel the earth,” the grizzled vets would complain.

McDougall’s chapter went into all of this and did a good job of putting it

into perspective. And the subsequent controversies stirred up by journalists who interviewed him on this subject did nothing to stifle the sales of the book. In fact, they sent it into overdrive, which we hope provided readers with an opportunity to wallow in the terrifically told story of the ultimate race that is at the book’s heart.

Its sole? Well, that became confusing, for several reasons.

One, there has long been a small contingent of people who run around on bare feet—besides the Kenyan kids going back and forth to school, that is. The barefoot folks grabbed hold of the controversy and ran with it. They were suddenly in the forefront of stories about running and about running shoes. They were writing articles about the benefits of running in bare feet, they were writing entire books on the subject, and they were being thrust onto the local news, slapping the skin of their soles and heels against the asphalt in low-angle camera shots.

And, to a certain degree, they made some valid points.

We human animals are overshod. Males are encased in hard, unyielding formal shoes that pinch the feet and cause discomfort, or they are in highly pseudosophisticated sports shoes that essentially negate the function of the foot. On the ladies’ side, let’s face it, however much they have lusted after shoes—and the more the better—the shoes they wore for fashion would have been castigated by Amnesty International if they were forced to wear them as a form of punishment

in repressive societies. How women managed to balance safely on some of those shoes has always been a matter of astonishment and a feat of human gymnastics comparable to walking a slack rope across the Grand Canyon. When fashion demanded high heels, podiatrists began looking at buying vacation homes with the profits gleaned from treating shortened Achilles tendons. And forget the honest podiatrist prescribing that the Achilles problems caused when a woman stepped off the high heels might be alleviated by wearing shorter heels: What was he going to suggest next, “sensible shoes” like Doc Martens? Outrage.

Many of the problems—and confusions—came when the barefoot prophets took the audacious step of bringing in the poor Tarahumara Indians of Copper Canyon, Mexico, some of the best very-long-distance runners in the world. Because McDougall discussed the Tarahumara in his book in the same chapter that he discussed barefoot running and the overengineering of running shoes, the barefoot crowd tried to incorporate the Tarahumara into their campaign.

The fact that was conveniently overlooked was that the Tarahumara don’t run barefoot. They go to the junkyard, retrieve a discarded Michelin 165-SR-15 two-ply steel-belted radial tire, cut it up, and make huaraches (crude sandals) out of it. In some ways, the Tarahumara were far in advance of the major shoe companies in that they were using beautifully advanced technologies developed over a century of research by the major automobile tire

manufacturers to shod the Porsches, BMWs, and Mercedes that sped down the German autobahn.

Chris McDougall made the distinction between barefoot and minimalist. In fact, when we went to an appearance he made in Northern California, he arrived wearing—and touting—the gorilla-footlike Vibram Five Fingers. More like a foot glove than a shoe, the odd-looking footwear was gracing McDougall’s feet that night, and he expounded on how going minimalist had recovered his running from the depths of chronic injuries. He was espousing Rich Englehart’s decadesold plea that “less is more,” touting the age-old wisdom of the Tarahumara, and taking a swipe at the major running-shoe companies. He acknowledged that some of the shoe companies had, within the last few years, begun manufacturing and promoting lighter, more basic shoe models. But he also said it was an uphill battle because the shoe companies had for years put so much advertising and marketing into maximizing shoe features that to undo all of that in a few years was virtually impossible.

Running in minimal footwear makes a great deal of sense, but it isn’t something a long-term runner can change to overnight. The bones, muscles, and tendons in the foot are built to serve as an energy-absorbing biological wonder when we thrust ourselves forward in an attempt to move efficiently through our world. The foot and ankle and Achilles tendon are built to absorb the shock of a landing with several times our body’s weight behind it. But like the suspension of a car that has not been maintained,

we can’t expect to make the changeover instantly. A lot of the bushings in the car’s suspension have dried out over the years, and they are ready to give out if we overtax them. The same with feet that have been shod in heavily reinforced running shoes for years.

The admonition to walk before you run is a good one if you are making the attempt to minimize running footwear. Keep in mind that the older we are, the more stiff and dried out are the tendons and connecting tissue in the foot and ankle, and hence, the more lengthy a break-in time we will need.

In the matter of strictly barefoot running, the cautions need to be even more stringent. And this comes from a guy who doesn’t wear shoes indoors, not because of a dedication to all things Oriental but simply because it feels better, and it’s a habit I borrowed from my mother, who, ever since I’ve known her, kicked her shoes off as soon as she crossed the threshold.

The world we live in today was not built for barefoot running. In fact, much of the world from the time it was made wasn’t built for barefoot running. Roman centurions didn’t wear sandals because they were fashionable. Mummies buried in Egyptian tombs didn’t have footwear buried with them because they foreshadowed Imelda Marcos. Even Jesus wore footwear (which Mary Magdalene was happy to remove before washing his feet with her hair), because the road was not always paved with rose petals.

Much of the earth was formed by violent upheavals from within that twisted and stressed the layers of rock

into grotesque, painful, sharp-edged outcroppings. Hit one of those exposed rocks ona mountain trail the wrong way while you are running barefoot, and your running days are over. Encounter a lava bed while running barefoot, and there aren’t enough Band-Aids in the world to staunch the bleeding. Run barefoot through the grass in a park and encounter a discarded hypodermic needle, and the results could be disastrous.

The practical aspects are legion. Running barefoot on ice can have devastating results, as can the opposite: running on asphalt where the sun has heated it to 200 degrees or more. Similarly, folks in the Deep South will tell you not to walk barefoot through the fields for fear of chiggers boring into

your feet looking for anew home. Even running on beach sand for an extended period of time can take its toll on the Achilles tendon.

In all things, common sense should prevail. Think through the trend you want to embrace before taking the plunge. And if you decide to take the plunge, do so gradually.

And please, please, please avoid self-parody. Don’t chuck all of your high-tech shoes in favor of a pair of Five Fingers and then run around with an iPod, heart rate monitor, and GPS strapped to you. When you get home and feed your workout into your computer, even your computer will tell you: Image does not compute.

—Rich Benyo

on the road with kathrine switzer

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something

Something Old June, New York City, USA

The T-shirt still fit. Well, barely. Thad to suck it in a lot, but let’s face it, it has been 40 years since I first wore it, and I take pride in the fact that I could even get it on. Come to think of it, the shirt manufacturer should take pride in the fact that the shirt hasn’t yet fallen apart. Maybe running really is good for everything.

It’s the 40th running of the New York Road Runners Mini 10K, the first—and thus the oldest—women’sonly road race in the world. Along with Nina Kuscsik and running’s greatest impresario, Fred Lebow, I was a founder of the race, and it seems like yesterday that we three were running all over New York City handing out race applications to anyone wearing a skirt. We were so desperate to get race entries that Fred even went to the Playboy Club and enlisted some bunnies to do a prerace photo op for publicity. Fred had a lot of ideas. Some of them were good and others not so good.

This race went on to change the world, but as with many things in the early days of our sport, the creation of “The Mini” was both exciting and hilarious. It was 1972, and in April of that year—after five long years of lobbying—women were made official in the Boston Marathon. Suddenly, as if it were brand new, there was massive publicity about us women runners. Nina Kuscsik won that important Boston, and I was third. We were both from New York.

Seeing the publicity from Boston, a public relations agency hit upon the idea that a women’s-only marathon was a great way to make a product launch for the new ladies’ shave cream that it was promoting for Johnson’s Wax. It was called Crazylegs. Actually, it was the same product as Edge for men, only the company had added perfume and colored it pink—sort of like the shoe companies today. Some things never change.

Anyway, the company came to Fred and the New York Road Runners to

stage the race, and it wanted Nina and me as spokesrunners. Fred was looking at the first really good sponsor he had ever had, and yet he knew that a women’s marathon was not going to be successful; there were only a handful of us in the whole country who were running that distance. He said he had an even better idea—how about six miles, once around Central Park, and call it a “Mini-Marathon” since the miniskirt was in fashion? On this score, Fred was on solid ground since he was in the New York garment trade. So the race became the Crazylegs Mini Marathon.

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We didn’t know how many women we would attract, and since the race was only six weeks away, we sent out flyers to every club, Y, school, and organization we could think of. Fred and I even went down to Max’s Kansas City, the “in” bar at the time, and handed out the flyers to women there, all of whom were smoking cigarettes. We were cool until the women read the flyer, and then it was like, you’ve got to be kidding me.

Seventy-eight women showed up! To us, this was an extravaganza. But imagine our surprise when we went to

Desperate to get race entries for the first Mini 10K in 1972, Fred Lebow went to the Playboy Bunny Club and enlisted some bunnies to do a pre-race photo op for publicity. Nina Kuscsick, near right, and Kathrine Switzer, far left, were not delighted with this plan, but went along with the photo op, which also included the then-New York City Commissior of Parks

and Recreation (center).

Sept/Oct 2011

ON THE ROAD WITH KATHRINE SWITZER | 13

pick up our race numbers and found that the Crazylegs people had our bib numbers printed on the Crazylegs Tshirt—yes, so you had to wear the shirt. Sure, it’s a great marketing ploy, but in the then-era of strict amateurism, even wearing a sponsor’s name was a risk to our “amateur” status because it was a commercial endorsement. We pounced on Fred, who swore he knew nothing about it. Yeah, right. That old shirt is now apiece of history, and it still makes me laugh—except, of course, when I try to put it on every 10 years.

In the end, 18-year-old Jackie Dixon, who won her trip to New York from The San Francisco Examiner for being the women’s winner of the Bay to Breakers earlier that year, won the race. We had never heard of Jackie Dixon, but that was a good thing. It proved what we had always been saying: There is plenty of women’s talent out there if you only give it an opportunity.

And that is precisely what the race has done, in thousands of different ways. Not just a New York forum for now over 200,000 women who have run the Mini for fun or fierce competition, the race itself inspired all the other women’s-only races that came after it. Some notable early ones were the Bonne Bell series and then the Avon International Running Circuit, which led directly to persuading the International Olympic Committee to include women’s distance events in the Olympic Games. And then came the charity runs, which have transformed fund-raising.

The race even inspired Grete Waitz to create “Grete’s Run” in Oslo, her

hometown. It became the biggest women’s run in the world: 47,000 women. This year, the Mini was dedicated to her because, indeed, it was here in 1980 that Grete set a world record of 31:00 for 10 kilometers over the tough hills of Central Park. The time proved that women could run fast, very fast. The world could not ignore that kind of performance. Again, the landscape for women’s running was changed. Grete’s performance would easily have won the race this year, 31 years later, which shows both how good she was and how perplexing this year’s race was. With a field that boasted 12 Olympians and six World Championship medalists among the sold-out field of 7,000, you would expect that winner Linet Masai (31:40) would have had someone pushing her harder. Sure, it was a very humid (96 percent) day but not hot, and Masai just drifted ahead in the front and was never challenged.

Something New

May, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

A grinning little sprite leapt across the finish line and was so surprised with her unexpected victory that she burst into tears.

Keddi-Anne Sherbino, age 21, had just run 2:43 and won the BMO Vancouver Marathon in only her second marathon effort. I swear she looked 15 years old, totally without the lean, defined body of an experienced distance runner and possessing bright shiny eyes perfectly rimmed with tear-proof mascara. She didn’t look like she had

even run around the block, much less 26 miles. Holy Toledo! Who is this young phenom?

It used to be in women’s marathoning that an unknown talent could pop suddenly out of nowhere and pull a surprise upset. That was because there were so few women’s opportunities to run that we often didn’t hear names from remote places. Now there are more women than men running in North America, women’s competitions and rankings are closely followed, and the Internet makes any possible performer a quickly known entity.

Keddi-Anne improved so fast that she didn’t have enough time to make her name known. Always an active kid growing up in Tsawwassen, British Columbia (a suburb of Vancouver), she ran her first race in the summer of 2009. She ran as she felt, with no watch.

Her first half-marathon, in 2010, was 1:18. Alarm bells should have sounded somewhere, but by that time, KeddiAnne had decided to enter the October 2010 Okanagan Marathon, even though she hadn’t trained for the distance. “I thought I’Il go out and do this race and cross it off my list,” she said.

She ran 2:53 in her first try. “I told my sister after the race I wasn’t even tired,” she said. “I didn’t realize what a big deal it was at the time.”

No watch, no coach, no training schedule … what next besides fielding the mass of calls from agents, coaches, and colleges and trying to separate the legitimate from the charlatans, the golden opportunities from the gold diggers?

A Inonly her second marathon, Keddi-Anne Sherbino, from Tsawwassen, BC won the 2011 BMO Vancouver Marathon. She has been running for only two years and already has an outside chance to represent Canada in the 2012 women’s Olympic Marathon.

One thing for sure has changed, she agrees. It’s no longer about crossing something off a list but about a goal she had never before imagined. She specifically wants to take a shot at getting a 2:29:55 marathon time by April 15, 2012. If she can do it, she will qualify for the Canadian women’s Olympic Marathon team for the 2012 London Olympics. It’s a long shot and she knows it, but the win at the BMO

© MarathonFoto

Vancouver Marathon showed that if the current rate of improvement were to continue, it’s possible.

Indeed, when you consider a careful buildup for the next five years, she could be awesome by the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. There are a lot of “ifs,” but watch this space.

Something Borrowed May, Lausanne, Switzerland

There is no more expensive real estate in the world than this beautiful, grassy slope alongside Lake Geneva in Lausanne, Switzerland. Perfectly tree lined, a road leads to a villa that overlooks the lake, with the snow-covered Alps in the far background. Alongside is a spectacular white marble edifice, perfectly designed. The slope is dotted with flowers and beautiful athletic statues. It is about as close to perfection as you can imagine.

This is the site of the Olympic Museum and the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee. Why I or hundreds of other athletes were ever worried about money in our sport and our amateur status, or how plenty of poor Africans still have to sell a precious farm animal to get travelling expenses to a race, seems a profound and even excruciating irony. Here no expense has been spared to show the glory of sport.

Or to show the glory of those who made sport happen. For the Olympic Museum is as much about the powerful, aristocratic men who directed and controlled the Olympics as it is about the athletes. I don’t mean to sound cynical (or not entirely, anyway) because these men did make the Olympics what they are. They were indeed often great visionaries and were brilliant financiers. Now they must be even more so in an era of instantaneous communications, ever-disproportionate wealth, and labyrinthine drug use. It’s not an easy job. I’m just not sure so much of a sports museum should be devoted to them.

What sport is about and what I came to see were athletes doing it, whether in old photos, slick digital replays, or ancient Greek vases. The photos were great; there were just not enough of them. But the Greek vases—with athletes running, wrestling, and throwing from 2,000 years ago—were stunning, and that collection alone was worth the trip.

What was disappointing was the massive effort—and, clearly, the money spent—on the interactive aspect of the museum. With thousands of hours of action footage of the greatest moments in Olympic competition available, the curators have chosen to dumb down a jump ora sprint by cutting the video into snippy bits and interspersing a similar event from the past, or showing crowd shots, and always ending with athletes hugging each other.

Here is an example. I had a choice of pushing a button for what I wanted to see: “Respect,” “Friendship,” or “Excellence.” I also could push a button that would allow me to be in the display or something else I’m not sure of. Huh? I’m a technoidiot and inadvertently agreed to have my own photo taken. If you see an irritated-looking woman

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A Beautiful, athletic statues, like this one of Emil Zatopek, dot the lawn around the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.

mouthing the words “Where is Zatopek?” on YouTube, c’ est moi. Anyway, I pushed “Excellence,” and presto, there is Carl Lewis getting ready for the long jump. Instantly, I was on full alert; oh, boy, I remember that jump! Oops, cut to Jesse Owens getting ready for his jump in the 1936 Olympics. OK, this could be great! We’ll do a side-by-side comparison. It never happened. I never saw the whole of either jump. There was a great cheering crowd, though, one big happy family. But where’s the beef? Clearly, there is some kind of touchy-feely mandate going on here,

an attempt to show that we athletes are all buddies. Well, we are. But we also will compete against each other and ourselves until our hearts burst. So please just show me the full effort; in its entirety, it is one of the most beautiful of human creations. And in the case of the 100-meter sprint, it takes less than 10 seconds, for heaven’s sake.

Perhaps the museum is designed to make the Olympics interesting and comprehensible to the average tourist. My experience, however, is that if you raise the standard, people will rise to that level. The Olympics is about as high as you can get, so it’s worth the effort.

In the museum’s defense, perhaps the library and archives (which were closed on the weekend we were there) are for people like us, who want more than a glimpse.

In any case, the potential is enormous. The museum has the resources and the technology. Ican easily imagine the day when this museum will use those glorious moving images to surround a viewing room, where you can virtually be alongside the event and your hero, closer than any stadium spectator, and watch it in real time or slow motion and treasure the experience.

And perhaps in time, some of those resources also will filter down to enable more talented young people to have the opportunity to be that hero.

Something Blue June, New York City

How do you stand before 7,000 people and tell them in 40 seconds about the

of New York Road Runners

profound loss of a woman who changed history and changed their lives?

Not easily.

As mentioned earlier, the 2011 New York Mini 10K—the gala 40thanniversary race—was dedicated to Grete Waitz. Grete was my friend, and I was honored to be a starting line speaker. I wanted to do my best for her …my best in 40 seconds.

This is part of what I said:

“This race, and all of you in it, has changed the world. And Grete Waitz, who won it five times—a champion among champions—has inspired all of us.

A Mary Wittenberg, president of the New York Road Runners, announces that Grete Waitz’s husband, Jack, will run the New York Mini in Grete’s honor as the race’s first official male runner.

“She was the greatest woman runner of the 20th century. And she was a wonderful woman.

“Today, and always, we run in her footsteps. Be inspired to run well, and do what Grete always did, which is to make a positive difference in someone’s life.”

Running the race will help chase the blues away, I hoped as I climbed down off the platform. Then Jack Waitz, Grete’s husband, climbed up. He was running the mini as the race’s first official male runner in tribute to Grete. At this news, there was thundering and prolonged applause—no whoops and cheers, just deeply felt gratitude. Quietly and simply, Jack expressed his appreciation—just like Grete, our modest champion.

The night before, the New York Road Runners hosted a beautiful reception, not to mourn Grete but to celebrate her. There were stories, videos, and anecdotes of her life. We were surprised to learn that Grete loved ABBA’s music, so the occasion ended with a pianist playing “The Winner Takes It All.” The blues kicked in big-time.

All through the race I thought of her, the Abba song playing over and over again in my head. It still is. It will for a long time.

The gods may throw the dice Their minds as cold as ice

And someone way down here Loses someone dear

—ABBA, “The Winner Takes It All”