I went for a run during a break I had at work today. Not too far, just an easy 10k around the Victoria Gorge neighborhoods. I got changed into my running kit and realized I only brought one sock for the workout. I had to make the decision; do I wear my long black dress socks or only one athletic sock. I chose the latter, and felt I could manage to easy run without too many problems. More on this later. But first I want to chat about shoes.
I have been mostly running in New Balance minimalist shoes as of recently while rotating in a day or two of my racing flats per week. I have transitioned to these minimalist shoes over the past six months with some break-in period to allow a buffer time to prevent injury (read plantar fascitis). Also, coming from a low-impact sport like rowing, I was feeling my lower extremity was going to take some time to get used to everything.
Many shoe companies are putting out a minimalist shoe and there are now many on the marked. I like New Balance due to it being a Canadian company and they were (one) of the first on the market the past few years pushing the R&D forward.
Speed and Injury Prevention
The big important point is how the foot strikes the ground on heel-strike during the stance phase of running. I literally mean, what part of your foot hit the ground first when you take a running stride. There are many different, functional, and fast styles of running gait. The more more heel strike you have, the longer the stride length you can maintain. With running speed determined by stride length x stride rate a lower turnover pace is needed to maintain the same speed. But, there is more chance for stress fractures with all that repetitive high impact.
My theory is that the most efficient stride length is a much shorter distance with little to no heel strike. I want my foot to land mid-foot during the stance phase of running. This forces me to utilize my own ergonomics (foot arch, achilles tendon, calf & hamstring muscles) to absorb utilize the impact of the foot strike with elastic energy and turn it into forward power and motion.
Yes, I will need to have higher rates of turn-over of my legs to maintain the same speed, but I utilize less energy overall due to the elastic energy gained by "winding up" my own structures to rebound during to toe-off stage. The image above depicts the difference between the two styles.
So, at the halfway point in my run today I realized I was getting a small blister on the medial plantar surface of my foot, the foot that had no sock. I stopped on a dry-ish spot of sidewalk with nobody around, took both my shoes off and removed my sock and put it on the other foot. When I looked up before I put on my shoes, a middle aged man was walking towards me looking completely confused by what I was trying to do. I was standing in the December rain changing sock. I just smiled and put on my shoes and ran back to the office. I hope to never to forget socks again (probably not).
