Sun, 11 Dec 2022
Beginner's Mind
Over eight years ago, I began a transition that would alter the course of my life in ways I could never have predicted. I'd already been running for around seven years, but I was still very much a baby runner, learning how my body tended to move through space while in motion. My growth as a runner was limited by ignorance—primarily ignorance as to the importance of proper footwear. Oh, I knew running shoes were a requirement; a week running in hiking shoes during sophomore year of high school taught me that hard lesson. What I didn't know is not all running shoes are created equal. I further didn't understand that each runner's gait was unique, individual, necessitating an equally personal approach to gear selection.
Thus, my periodic shoe selection was generally based on the recommendation of the salesperson at the shoe store, as long as those shoes fit reasonably well. I knew virtually nothing about the technology underfoot: whether I needed a stabilizing or a neutral style, or even something more basic like what sort of cushioning system I preferred. Indeed, I didn't really even know that there existed such distinctions. Due, in part, to this ignorance, for the first few years of my running life, suboptimal footwear choices hampered my progress.
In my early twenties, I read a book that opened my mind to a different philosophical take on running. (For those interested, the book is called ChiRunning and, while I don’t endorse it wholeheartedly, the contents allowed me a more intentional framing of running as a practice, which has certainly been a net positive in my life; it’s a little too prescriptive in my opinion, so if you choose to read, do so with a grain of salt readily at hand.)
I began experimenting with less and less shoe. I went from a moderate- to high-cushion shoe, down to a moderate- to low-cushion shoe, down to a minimalist shoe. As my muscles adapted to the minimalism of the New Balance Minimus, I found that I experienced less pain, more pleasure (more consistently), and found myself exploring longer and longer distances than were previously accessible to me.
I remember the first time I ran nine miles. The afterglow of that accomplishment is still one of my fondest memories. I beamed with endorphin-fueled pride after finishing, and radiated intense joy during.
While attending school in Florida, I worked my way up to regularly putting twelve-mile runs in every weekend. All told, I put more than 1,300 miles on that pair of Minimus before they finally died. I used the next version of the shoe as well, but they just weren't the same. They weren't bad, but I could tell right away that we weren't going to be such close friends as those OG Minimus, not for 1,300 miles.
Not long after moving back to Washington State, I discovered a brand called Skora; they specialized in minimalist and barefoot shoes. I tried a few of their shoes and, ultimately, found my favorite shoe of all time: the Skora Core. It boasted an incredibly thin stack height, zero drop midsole, goat leather upper, and a sleek minimal aesthetic that visually matched the minimalism of the somatic experience. Over time, the leather upper wore in and formed itself around my foot for a unity of being that I have henceforth yet to replicate.
To put it mildly, this shoe changed everything for me.
***
I worked in run specialty by this time, so I had access to just about any brand I could possibly want (at least for road running). I used in several different styles regularly and, eventually, developed an intimately nuanced understanding of the experience to be had in a variety of different footwear options, much in the same way that a food critic might detect the slightest subtlety in an exquisite meal prepared by a world-renowned chef. No matter how many different styles I wore, however, I kept coming back to the barefoot experience found in the Core. My body just wanted to feel the entire run with nothing in the way.
The synaptic feedback of a run in barefoot or minimalist footwear is, quite simply, sensory bliss. At least for me. The proprioceptive intelligence such footwear has allowed me to develop is something I appreciate every day and have never once taken for granted. The continual somatic and subconscious feedback loop of my foot-strikes on a run brings me into the present moment like nothing else ever can. When I run, there is no past and no future; when I run in barefoot shoes, in addition to the elimination of past and future as meaningful concepts, the present becomes unmitigated and inescapable joy.
Over the course of two or three years, I put nearly 3,200 miles in my Skoras before they fell apart. (Another beautiful thing about barefoot shoes is there's nothing to break down so they last for-fucking-ever.) My relationship with those shoes was not unlike that of a dearly beloved friendship. They were always there for me. They carried me through some difficult times. I grew as a runner and as a person with them by my side (or on my feet, rather).
But as with all good things, this, too, was a finite friendship, bound to the constraints of the inevitable crawl of time—despite the perceptual escape thereof they offered. The Second Law caught up in the end and I had to retire them. They now sit on a shelf in my room as a reminder of all the miles we shared together.
In a tragic turn of events, and due to a variety of factors that I don't fully understand to this day, Skora stopped making shoes. They kept saying they'd be making more, but after a series of delays, they ultimately stopped saying anything at all. I heard nothing more from the company for years. Never again would I find another pair of the Skora Core.
I was devastated.
***
Minimalist and barefoot running was a fad sparked by a remarkably popular book called Born to Run. The book itself was okay, but, in my cynical view, what made it such a hit was our culture's obsession with finding that magic bullet to make exercise easy (usually for the purposes of losing weight or some similarly sad and problematic endgame). Even though the book did not make this claim, many people read between the lines and thought that barefoot running was the magic cure-all for any and every running-related ailment known to humankind, that barefoot running would make running easy. It was not and it did not.
The masses went out and bought their barefoot shoes only to return them a few weeks later when they inevitably got injured.
It took me more than a year and a half of deliberate, strategic transition before I ever did my first mile in a barefoot shoe. And even then, my gait just naturally works well with barefoot running. This is far from a universal truth where our modern world is concerned.
Most of us (particularly in the Western world) grow up wearing shoes that have some level of cushioning and structure built into them. The appeal to nature fallacy so prevalent in the barefoot running community frustrates me to no end.
"The reason foot problems exist is because the shoes we wear are unnatural!"
Okay, sure. That may well be true to some extent. It’s not like the first Homo Sapiens could wear the latest Nike gear or anything.
"Switching to barefoot shoes restores your natural stride and fixes all your foot problems!"
Okay, no. You lost me. You see, in order for that to be true, we would also have to live in a world that mirrored the world of our evolutionary ancestors. But we don't. We live in a world that is not even remotely similar. Whether we find ourselves in sprawling metropolitan centers or in intimate rural communities, the surfaces on which we walk or run are most often flat and made of materials like concrete or asphalt. Even the primitive, unpaved gravel roads of rural America more closely resemble a highway than the African savannahs wherein our species evolved.
Many of us in the modern world are uniquely prone to overuse injuries largely as a result of the ubiquity of repetitive movements—whether running or walking—on surfaces with no dynamic change. If we were primarily running on trails, I'd be more willing to listen to appeals to nature as those are much more similar to the terrain our ancestors would have found “natural”.
I can't definitively prove this, but after a few years, the minimalist running craze disappeared as quickly as it emerged mostly because it was so niche and simply did not work for most people. But damn if it didn't work perfectly for me in every conceivable way. I resented the free market for doing what it does and responding to consumer demand: it shifted away from minimalism to thick, high-cushion shoes, as well the extremely technologically developed styles that we now call “super shoes”. This is not to cast dispersions on such shoes; they are unequivocally safer for most people and, in the case of super shoes, the myriad broken records speak for themselves.
The sad consequence of this shift, though, is that minimalist shoes became increasingly difficult to find. With Skora gone, it took me a little over a year to find another brand of barefoot shoes that worked well for me: Vivobarefoot.
I really enjoy the Primus, one of their athletic styles. It's a great shoe. And, like all good barefoot shoes, it doesn't get in the way of my proprioception; it allows the fullness of my synaptic/somatic experience on any given run. At the same time, though, the Primus is not the Core. I often cast a fond glance upon the shelf now housing the final resting place of my Skora Core; I do so with that all-too-familiar wistful pang of nostalgic sadness, mourning a time gone by that will never return.
I've had a few pairs of the Primus now (my first one is still going strong but is coming up on the end of its respectable lifespan at over 1,600 miles—not bad at all!) and I really do love the current version: great fit, amazing lacing system, delightfully thin and flexible for unencumbered groundfeel. Collectively, I've put nearly 2,000 miles in the Primus series, but as wonderful as they are, I won’t be putting them on my shelf when they finally give up the ghost. They just don’t hold the same status in my affections.
***
Fast-forward: about a month ago, an email popped up in my inbox. It was from Skora. “Legacy styles are returning,” they said. The email prompted me to sign up for notifications so I could be the first to know when they were ready. I didn’t waste any time. I signed up immediately and hoped the Core would be among the returning styles.
I'll cut to the chase, it wasn't. But I was not to be deterred. I ordered a different style called the Phase as soon as it was available. They arrived a couple days ago and, today, I took them on our first run.
It was every bit as pure and wonderful an experience as I remembered. Tears escaped the corners of my eyes on more than one occasion throughout the run. I bounded through Queen Anne past Kerry Park and down the stairs, along the length of the Elliott Bay Trail, exiting in Magnolia and continuing parallel to the train tracks separating me from Interbay. I turned toward the Ship-to-Canal Trail, and then back up the hill to finish in Upper Queen Anne.
It was twelve miles of somatic and sensory ecstasy, of gloomy grayscale Seattle cityscapes, of relaxing lofi hiphop instrumentals, of utter and complete autistic joy. More than all of that, though, it was a little slice of the past brought back to me through some welcome rift in the space-time continuum—a small relic from a cherished simpler time that I've long yearned for without any real hope of ever again finding.
And yet, I found it again.
From the inceptive mile of this afternoon's run, I was thrust back into a beginner's mind. I was running for the first time, reminded anew of every reason I run. I was a decrepit soul resigned to a decaying, dismal future who was surprised with the gift of youth once again. Even though the sky was heavy and gray, my weary mind felt the warmth of a conceptual sunbeam breaking through the overcast clouds that Seattle wears like armor.
I recalled to memory a truth I find far too easy to forget: there is beauty in being alive.
These are just shoes. I get that. But the way I feel right now is like the delightful shock of an unexpected reunion with a dear friend I thought I'd never see again. Moreover, we're not seeing one another briefly in passing, only to quickly fade from each others' lives hereafter. No, I get to adventure with this friend of mine for as long as the mileage allows. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll get another 3,200 miles. I'll be just as happy with another twelve.