As a girl, I always looked up to my Aunt Sheila because she was (and still is, in her 60s) a runner. To me, she represented the ideal of “healthy” because she ate right and she ran every day.
It was something I admired from afar, though; my mother spent most of her adult life sickly and physically weak, and as a result I was raised to a very sedentary life. Mother was obsessed with weight loss, but her vision of that was limited to radical calorie restriction. By the time I was twelve I could give you the calorie count of a plate of food by looking at it (a parlor trick I can still do with accuracy) but I had no clue about the right ways to exercise.
I’ve tried running off and on as an adult, and while I’ve stuck with it for periods of time I’ve never gotten to that point of appreciating it enough to make it part of my life. Honestly, it’s always been drudgery. I’ve educated myself with books about physical fitness and jogging and weight training, so I’m not ignorant anymore, and while I’ve come to love yoga with a deep passion, the whole running thing escaped me.
Which is weird, because as children we ALL run. We love it. We run here and there, from person to place, doing laps around the back yard simply because we can (and really, a lap around a good sized yard is like a half-marathon to a four year old, right?). Then we grow up and, at least in my case, running becomes some mystery we can’t fathom.
I think it’s the shoes.
Bear with me: as kids, most of our running is done barefoot. We hate shoes — what kid do you know who doesn’t try to kick off her shoes every chance she gets? But then we get old enough to be responsible, shoe-wearing citizens and suddenly running becomes difficult.
I never thought about that until I starting living by paleo/primal guidelines. Barefooting is huge in that community, based on the idea that our bodies are not intrinsically designed wrong but are, in fact, very well engineered for things like walking and running. This may sound like crazy!talk in our shoe-obsessed society, but going barefoot is what we evolved to do.
Now mind you, I hate going barefoot. I’m not a hippy and I’m squirrely about my feet (don’t ask, childhood trauma). But I know a good concept when I see it, so I went and bought a pair of Vibram FiveFingers shoes…they look hideous, IMHO, but having worn them for a while let me say unequivocally: I GET IT.
Instead of trudging along feeling like I’m clumping around with concrete for feet, I soar over the ground. It’s not just the fact that the Vibrams are far lighter than any regular sneaker (they are, though), it’s the way my feet interact with the ground. I’m not fighting gravity anymore but working with it, using my muscles and bones the way they are designed, to do what they evolved to do best.
I love running now. Not jogging, but running: the full out, on the balls of your feet, heart-pumping exercise that is running. I can only do it for short distances (and I do mean very short distances) but every time I go running I those distances get a few yards longer. And I look forward to it.
The only thing that has changed are the shoes I wear, but the change has been profound and life-altering. Running “barefoot style” is just amazing. It’s like flying. It’s freedom, inspiration, and passion all wrapped up in one heart-pounding exercise. I’m not running because I have to or need to or someone told me I should; I’m running for the joy of it.
Catch me if you can!
