Free Your Ears And Your Run Will Follow

My (wife’s) iPod crashed last week...right before a workout.  It wasn't a ‘good news, bad news’ situation.  It was more like a ‘good news, bad news, really bad news’ thing. 

Good news:  I had many of my favorite music files tucked away in my smart phone. 

Bad news:  The iPod required a reset to factory specifications.

Really bad news:  My computer was stolen a couple of weeks back; not only did I lose three years’ worth of training data, blog posts, articles, research and photos, but nearly two thousand MP3 files and podcasts, which were not in my iTunes account.  Thus, many of my favorite songs in that “sweet spot” tempo of 80-to-90 beats per minute would either need to be reinstalled from source CDs, or were gone forever.

I’ve written on many occasions how fickle technology can be toward the running athlete.  The more dependent we become on the technology to tell us what we think we need to know, or to make us happy during the run, the more earth-shattering it seems when everything “goes south.” 

My views on using personal music players vary from ambivalence and pragmatism to pity, depending on the shirt I’m wearing at the moment:

If I’m in running attire at a race the view is closer to ambivalence.

If I’m in a red or zebra-striped polo shirt I’m busy reaching for my notepad.  (My friends know what I mean.) 

I don’t run on the roads with a music player, but I’ll sing to myself when I run outside.  I tell my wife, for much the same reason I train on a treadmill, I want to control as many of the variables as possible.

One of the reasons people run with a music player is to dissociate, or to drown out the “stop already” messages the muscles, lungs and heart send to the brain throughout the course of a race.  Other runners use music players to reinforce run tempo (one reason they are prohibited in triathlon).  But there’s more that happens between the ears and the earphones of the individual runner when music is involved.

We have an internal clock which controls how well we move in the forward direction; run rhythm, stride length, run speed, and so on.  When fatigue sets in we need to grasp for some sort of cue to align with the “clock” in our head and normalize ourselves: music, lines in the road/on the track, telephone poles, etc.  The tempo of the music in the player may…or may not…be aligned with the "right" tempo for the individual runner.  Unless you’re a complete obsessive-compulsive it is highly unlikely your music is set aside in beat-per-minute playlists.  (In the interest of public disclosure, I do notate my BPM on my tracks.) 

That most likely means you are thinking more about what’s going into your head than what you’re putting out via your legs.

Do you sing in the shower?  Do you sing while cooking? Or folding clothes? 

And if you do, do you ALWAYS sing at the EXACT tempo at which the song was performed?

If you answered ‘no’ to the last question you may not need a music player to improve your running.  You can most likely sing your way to a better run performance.

Satoh and Kuzuhara (2008) assessed the time and steps of subjects walking along straight and curved paths while mentally singing a familiar song.  They were asked to listen to the song, clap hands while listening, sing the song, clap while singing the song, sing while walking in place, walk while singing, then walk while singing to themselves.  Analysis of the gait (degree of arm swing, the height of the knees and the smoothness of turn) was performed by a trained observer.

The patients reported feeling improvements in foot progression, ease of arm swing, knee raise and turning and fixation of walking speed. Qualitative evaluation of walking indicated higher knee lift, larger arm swings, smoother turns and less inconsistency in gait.  There was a significant improvement in the time and steps while walking a straight path and turning.  The researchers believed improvement would be more dramatic in the event of worse gait disturbance.  The study participants were able to use mental singing to recover normal pacing when pace was disturbed.

Athletes who moderate their run mechanics by the use of music will most likely benefit from simply singing to themselves during the run rather than placing their safety at risk by using a music player.

Ticky Tacky and Toe Shoes

First, a very big tip of the running cap to Malvina Reynolds for her song, "Little Boxes." Those of you who have seen the Showtime series, Weeds, know this little song:

"Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky; little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same. There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one, and they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same."

I have a copy of Bill Squires' "Fast Tracks: A History of Distance Running Since 884 BC," and recently looked back at the shoes of distance runners of the late 19th and early 20th century. To look at the overwhelming majority of the pedestrians it's simple to understand why running might be looked upon as a frivolous pursuit. Most of the photos and lithographs show them in lightweight leather shoes or sneakers.

And when I talk sneakers, I'm not talking about the stuff I wore playing indoor volleyball in the mid-1990s, but Keds and Chuck Taylors, the shoes I played in as a youngster up until my first pair of tennies issued to me in the Air Force in 1980. Since running tracks were cinder or dirt in those days I bet there wasn't much of a demand for cushioned shoes. And I can guess most folks didn't do a lot of distance running because the shoes weren't all that supportive for their feet. My loving bride ran the Crescent City Classic ten-kilometer road race in a pair of hot pink Chuck Taylors. I bought that pair because they looked good with the costume she was wearing, not thinking she would get fed up with walking and decide to run the last two miles. Ten years later, she swears she'll never pull that sort of stunt ever again.

And the people in the houses all went to the university, where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same. And there's doctors and lawyers, and business executives, and they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

Frank Shorter's Olympic marathon victory in 1972 is heralded as the advent of the first running boom, which was aided by the mass-marketing of trainers by shoe manufacturers like adidas, Onitsuka (now Asics) and Nike. I had no clue whether the shoes I had for track my senior year in high school, a pair of Sears-Roebuck-branded joggers (I would have gladly traded, along with my step-mother, for a pair of adidas), were harmful to my feet. At least I was able to protect my tootsies from the myriad of thorns and stones I encountered on my training runs.

Fast-forward a quarter-century and technology has advanced to the point where our shoes can almost talk to us. Nike gave us air. Asics gave us gel. Saucony gave us grid. And we gave more of our hard-earned dough for more of their technology. Ever see a pair of shoes which looked so damned ugly you knew they were not meant for you? I have three words: Asics Gel Kinsei.

And they all play on the golf course and drink their martinis dry, and they all have pretty children, and the children go to school, and the children go to summer camp and then to the university, where they are put in boxes and they come out all the same.

The great monolith Nike waited until after the death of Bill Bowerman. Visionary, tinkerer, and curmudgeon, Bowerman eventually criticized his own initial creation and Nike's tendency to add too much to the shoe over time...for no other reason than to make money off the running public. Too much money for too much needless technology. Much to their horror, Nike also learned some their sponsored athletes (particularly under coach Vin Lanana) were training barefoot. How can you make money off the bare foot? Looks like a lot of the shoe manufacturers went back to making shoes which either were light and minimally-supportive like racing flats, or like reinforced socks.

You would think the "barefoot running" purists would rejoice at the market slowly turning back toward lightweight, minimally-supportive, minimally-cushioned shoes as a method of strengthening the lower extremities of runners while protecting from the most hazardous aspects of modern outdoor running. But no.

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family in boxes made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same. There's a green one and a pink one, and a blue one and a yellow one, and they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

I thought I had seen parochialism and dogmatism in the world of training plans and coaching philosophies. The "barefoot" community makes almost any other pluralistic group seem, well, pluralist. Case in point: I purchased a pair of Fila Skele-Toes, partly because I wanted to try out a pair of "barefoot" shoes (I'm not certain what one would consider a foot covering for the "barefoot" running enthusiast, so "shoes" will have to do.), and partly because I did not want to spend the money on a more-expensive pair of Vibrams. To look at the comparison reviews, one would think they had inadvertently landed on the forum of "The Nation" or "The American Spectator".

The Fila Skele-Toes are definitely not as flexible in the sole area as the Vibrams. There are also versions of the Fila with soles which look much like the Nike Free, with a little more firmness. But, the Filas have less cushion than my K-Swiss K-Ona triathlon running shoes (a borderline minimalist shoe) and are narrower in the footbed, so it's a good step in the direction of a completely barefoot walking experience. Yes, I said walking. I have no intention to move in the general direction of barefoot running. I want to see if a minimalist shoe/modality enables me to develop enough lower extremity strength to protect the achilles tendons.

And if it works, I could care less what the Vibram/barefoot purists have to say.

Because we all don't have to be the same.