Hertzler Outpost

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Running barefoot proved different than I expected!

Ironically, I am convinced it is the best way to avoid running injuries, while at the same time I was unable to condition my bare feet to run without getting injured. (Or maybe I was just unwilling to be patient enough after two months.)

The most important factor in all of this was changing my running form – from landing on my heels to landing on my forefoot. That is the biggest factor and the one that I think everyone who runs should know.

Learning to run barefoot is the key to learning good running form!

These are some marks of good running form, all achieved by learning to run barefoot.

• Plant your foot towards the ball of your foot to lessen impact and braking.
• Keep your back and midsection straight with a slight tilt from the ankles, not the waist.
• Don’t let your arms cross your midsection. That creates side to side movement, not forward movement.

After learning to run barefoot and changing my running form, I decided I wanted something under my foot after all. The water shoes worked pretty well but were not breathable, so I decided they wouldn’t work for any distance longer than about 3 miles.

So yesterday I got these racing flats. They have very little padding, so you can feel your foot hit the ground as it’s landing (and respond by having your foot and calf absorb the impact). They have no heel on them, so you have more room to ‘catch’ the impact and spread it across your foot. They seem fairly breathable, too, but they could be better in this area. And they cost $50, less than any other pair of running shoes I have purchased. If they last 250 or more miles, they will also be the best value.

I ran 5 miles in them, and they worked great! I think I’ll continue running in them for now.

It has been two months since I started learning to run barefoot. The purpose for learning to run barefoot is to avoid running injuries caused by landing on your heel each stride. Instead, barefoot running forces you into better running form by causing you to land on your forefoot and absorbing the landing impact with your foot and lower leg muscles.

Here is what I’ve learned about running barefoot so far.

• This type of running will avoid injuries because it eliminates the primary cause of running injuries; the heel-landing impact on each stride.
• Barefoot running is anti-intuitive to most people, yet once you do it you understand.
• Barefoot running uses lower-leg muscles, whereas heel-landing running uses upper-leg muscles. It took me almost a month to get my lower leg muscles (calves) in shape. It was like learning to run all over again.
• Many people run long distances in their bare feet, but I have trouble running more than a few miles in bare feet. I still don’t know if I can build endurance in my feet or if I simply need to put some shoes on.
• Even if I end up wearing shoes for most of my running miles, I will run a few miles barefoot each week in order to keep my running form good.
• I will NEVER go back to my old running form, shoes or not!
• EVERY runner should learn barefoot running form, even if they don’t run barefoot!

My longest barefoot distance on sand has been 4 miles, but my longest barefoot distance on pavement is only 2.5 miles. My right foot is bruised right now between the ball of my foot and the outer mid-sole. I think this was from landing and pushing off on the small stones on the beach in Antalya, but I’m not sure.

One thing IS sure; after running this way, I don’t feel sore the next day (except for the bottoms of my feet, of course). Usually it would take me two days to recover from a 5 mile (or longer) run before I would run again. I think I could run everyday using this form as long as my feet could take it.

Right now I’m running about half my miles in cheap water shoes. They protect my feet, but they don’t breath at all because they’re neoprene. It looks like if I want to run any longer distances I’ll need a breathable shoe. Racing flats are my next option to try.

I’ll keep you posted.

Knowledge Cafe at MinistryNet
- photo by Mick Haupt

Here’s what one veteran participant had to say about the MinistryNet Conference last week.

International gatherings are inevitably complicated and expectations are hard to meet, given different cultures and languages. I’ve been in my share of so-so conferences like this over the past four decades. But the buzz here in Antalya is palpable. A fellow from Romania said he was so excited he could hardly sleep. A British colleague has people queuing up to discuss how he could help with transforming their corporate websites into a platform for transformational ministry based on his boundary-busting prototype.

Reports like this convince me that God answered the prayers of many people and made last week’s conference a big lurch forward for our organization’s ability to integrate the use of the Internet with how we work to tell people about the hope of the gospel.

My boss, Keith, wrote the following summary of the MinistryNet Conference.

I’ve been watching the 166 MinistryNet participants leave today. 37 countries on 5 continents are receiving back some highly motivated people with written strategic plans to implement specific steps to leverage internet communication tools in our win-build-send mission. My prayer is that the world will never be the same. That the kingdom will be impacted for eternity because of our days together.

This conference was a special time for me. God reminded me that when I was asked to step into the Chief Technology Officer role in 2001, I asked God what he would have me work towards. I wrote down 4 things. One was “Identifying emerging leaders with a pioneering/entrepreneurial spirit who are willing to claim a part of the internet world for Christ.” This conference was part of God’s gift to me to see it happening.

The water shoes worked. My feet were not sore after running a mile in them. My calves were very sore, but I can condition that.

Nevertheless, others insist there is no need for anything between your foot and the ground.

Vibram
FiveFingers

At my class reunion a couple weeks ago, my friend Chris showed me the goofiest looking pair of shoes I have ever seen, Vibram FiveFingers. But when he explained why he had them, it didn’t sound goofy anymore. In fact, he convinced me to learn to run barefoot.

Most of the running injuries I have experienced, and every one of the running injuries I have heard of, seem to result from the forceful impact of your heel hitting the ground and traveling up your leg to your hip. By running barefoot, your forefoot absorbs all that energy instead. This diagram is the best description I found for this school of thought.

I am near the end of my running days unless something changes, so I am willing to try just about anything I can afford.

My experience running barefoot, so far, makes me think it will remove the impact problems and injuries. But now the problem has shifted to the skin on the bottom of my feet. I just can’t see actually running barefoot on pavement without as many injuries, albeit new and different ones, to the skin on my feet. So I went in search of new running shoes in an effort to avoid the same goofy shoes as my friend.

I think I found what I was looking for: water shoes.

Nike Sneakerboat ($20 on clearance)

Generic Water Socks ($10)

After running a mile barefoot last night, my lower legs and feet are still sore, so it will take a few days before I can give these new shoes a good test run. I’ll probably post comments about how it goes on my Twitter feed, so follow me there if you’re interested. (I marked each related post with a ‘hashtag’ of ‘#LTRB’. You can search Twitter for this string, #LTRB, and it will show you all my posts.)

WCA Class of 1984 Reunion Dinner

Had a great time at dinner last night with friends from high school. 25 years made everyone a better version of themselves. Or maybe I grew up enough to enjoy everyone more. Either way, a great time.

Today we had a picnic at WCA’s Creve Coeur campus and got a tour of the building, now much different than when we were there. It didn’t make me want to be back in high school, but it made me glad I stayed in touch with my classmates.

Here’s the rest of the pics from last night and today over on Flickr.

Andrew and Audrey

Andrew’s last first day of school. Audrey has a few more. This year school starts early again. They get to take the red bus in the background when I work from home.

Armadillo burrow

This is the hole that the same armadillo keeps burrowing under our backyard palm trees every few months. This has been going on for two years now. I fill in the hole, and he burrows it out again a couple months later. Got any ideas how to stop him from burrowing here, short of calling a professional pest remover?

Longs Peak Start @ 2:30 am

We did it! Andrew and I climbed Longs Peak with our friends, Matt and Ben. It was more difficult and treacherous than we expected, but we made it back without falling off or giving up. Our previous hike up to the half-way point didn’t seem to help much. Over 12,500 feet elevation the altitude began really making things difficult. Being light-headed, dizzy, and out of breath while climbing across a narrow rock path above a 100 foot drop off didn’t leave me feeling confident. In spite of the challenges there were at least 300 other people on the trail and about 50 others on the summit when we got there!

We’re glad we did it, but we haven’t talked about doing it again yet.

Here’s Matt’s video of the event.

Summer Tech Team

For most of the summer I have fielded computer questions and resolved laptop problems. This is the team that works with me, all extremely capable. It has been over ten years since I’ve done computer help desk work, but I am enjoying the reprise. We have resurrected nearly-dead laptops, fine tuned slow ones, worked out encoding issues on the Internet broadcast of our conference, and published an online purchasing system to sell off the 70 laptops we used to run the conference and summer programs. They have been a fun team to work with.

Cathy working another registration

Today and tomorrow the rest of CCC’s US Staff members arrive and register for our biennial staff conference. Cathy will be helping people register all day. I scrambled all morning setting up, but now things have slowed down a bit.

Catalytic converter repair, “cat” repair, as most mechanics call it, has a great range of prices for the work! Back in Orlando when the “check engine” light came on in our Chrysler van, the service station we took it to quoted $750 to fix it. We decided to pass. Then today at lunch, here in Fort Collins, the Chrysler dealership quoted $1020 to fix it. I just laughed. The work got done at Hawker’s Auto for $250 later this afternoon. A much nicer price. I have a little better insight now into why Chrysler is going out of business.

Audrey in the Coffee House

Helping students stay awake as they study, keeping fresh coffee available, and cleaning up are some of the things Audrey is doing as part of her job in the Coffee House this summer. The brilliant neon yellow uniform t-shirts didn’t make her terribly excited, but she likes the job otherwise. Earlier she was doing a lot of babysitting during the day for staff member parents on the conference team, and I think she likes this job better.

At Chasm Lake Under Longs Peak Summit

Later in the summer Andrew and I hope to climb Longs Peak (14,395 feet), behind us in the picture. This morning we hiked half the distance (4 miles) up to Chasm Lake which sits under its very imposing summit. The last four miles will, of course, be where the majority of the difficulty comes, and they say it takes about 13 hours round trip. And you have to start at 3:00 am so you can make it up and off the summit area before 11:00 am or so to avoid thunderstorms.

It was pretty fun today and not too hard, but I’m sure that last section will be a challenge.

Andrew, Computer Lab Monitor

Helping students log in to the computer lab computers, setting up printers on other laptops, and refilling paper in the printers are a few of the things Andrew is doing as part of his summer job as Computer Lab Monitor. Another high schooler had the morning shift (during classes) when the lab was virtually empty. Andrew got the busy shift today, but I think he’s enjoying it.

Empty Sobe’s

Since we’ve been here Audrey has consumed about one Sobe a day, and the bottles have accumulated on the already very small kitchen counter. So Cathy got some thrift store flowers and made a mantle arrangement of them which makes our temporary home seem more homey.

Cathy is a Registration Helper

Today about 800 600 staff members of Campus Crusade for Christ will go through registration for the Institute of Biblical Studies, CCC’s biennial summer Bible school. Cathy is a registration helper, and I have already done most of my work for the day on the Tech Team. We set up the ad hoc computer networks in two rooms and scrambled at the last minute to resolve a problem that kept the Finance team from working. Stuff like that. But things are running smoothly now, so I have a few minutes to post this.

Compared to the relative calm of the last three weeks, I think it will be a lot busier here for the rest of the summer.

The line of people waiting to register
goes around the building

Update: Why not 800? It turns out that about 200 people incorrectly indicated their arrival on this date! They must have clicked on “21″ thinking it was July 21, the time when most people will arrive for the main conference. Instead they were actually clicking on June 21.

CCC’s Conference Team getting
instructions – photo by David Nagy

This is the first time Cathy and I have joined CCC’s U.S. Staff Conference Team, but it’s about 30th year Campus Crusade has held our biennial U.S. Staff Conference here in Fort Collins, CO. But on Thursday we all did something for the first time, even the other long-time veterans of this staff conference team. We did a community service project.

The work was weeding and mulching in the Fort Collins City Park. You can see in the picture that our group is fairly large, so we managed to make a significant difference in the park’s landscape.

And compared to working with people and computers, working outside on landscaping is a downright pleasure!

Hail Storm, Ft. Collins

It’s been hailing for the last 30 minutes here. Never seen a hail storm last this long with as much accumulation, about 0.25″. Cathy and Audrey are driving into town today, but they won’t arrive until this afternoon. So they missed the excitement.

Update: The piles of hail didn’t melt until later in the evening, and the next morning there were still piles of hail/snow in the shady corners! That’s more winter in June than we have ever had in Orlando!

Setting Up

It’s been ten years since I setup computer network cabling, but I ran enough in the last few days to make up for it. Andrew and I arrived in Fort Collins, Colorado on the Campus Crusade U.S. Staff Conference Advanced Team earlier this week to help unload trailers and build an operations office. The work is a nice diversion from my normal job.

I’ve always said, “When you work with computers, nothing is ever easy. When you work with people, computers are easy.” So I’m back to working with computers, and they’re easy.

This conversation, from a visitor on EveryStudent.com, ended well. It seems this visitor, like most atheists who are willing to respond on the website, was raised in a Christian home but rejected his family’s faith. Rather than argue with him, I told him about my experience knowing God. And I told him I didn’t want to change his mind unless he was looking for a different way to see things.

This was his response:
“Well thanks for the conversation Jerry. Sorry for having a rude tone with you, its just i’ve been yelled at and called mean mean mean names so many times for being atheist. Thank you for not trying to change my mind.”

Cottonmouth by our front door

Andrew walked out the front door today and nearly stepped on this guy. At first we thought it was a water snake, but then he opened his mouth and showed us his two fangs. Then we thought it was a copperhead, but he escaped into the bushes and rattled. And we could see his tail rattling in there, too. But then he escaped entirely, and we couldn’t figure out where he went. So we’ll be checking out the window first whenever we go out our front door for the next few days!

[We originally concluded it was a rattlesnake, but someone left a comment on this photo on Flickr.com saying it was a cottonmouth. He was right. It's a cottonmouth. This picture on National Geographic looks exactly like what this snake did when he saw us.]

Greg and I waiting for the start

This morning my friend, Greg, and I did the “Enter the Food Chain 1k Swim” with about 75 others at Lake Cane (and one turtle that I almost bumped into half way across). Lots of fun. Everyone who completes their first lake crossing gets to sign Lucky’s wall and gets a patch and bumper sticker. And they complete the first leg toward the 100k Club. There’s even a Wikipedia article about the swim. Here’s a short video of the start.

Lucky is just a nice guy who opens his boat dock every morning for a group of swimmers. If that wasn’t enough, he provides a patch and bumper sticker to every new successful lake crosser. He’s a generous guy.

I grew up doing lake swims at the family lake in Wisconsin (which is about as far across, at its widest, as Lake Cane), but this had to be the funnest one. And since Greg and I are getting ready for a triathlon we threw in a bike ride and run when we got home. That’s what I call a good Saturday morning!

This article was the start of the following email to me from a visitor on the EveryStudent.com site: “If god is perfect and creates imperfect beings deliberately, then why does he punish them for their imperfections.” And thus another conversation with an atheist begins…

Ted, Ben, me

I did the IOA 5k again this year and beat my time from last year. That’s always a good thing. Campus Crusade for Christ fielded a team of about 400! We had the biggest team in Orlando, won the best t-shirt design award, and our race director, Lorraine Hardaway, won best race director award. 11,000 people participated in the event in downtown Orlando, so our large group didn’t even seem so large. Friends who walked said they crossed the starting line after I had already finished the race!

Running with coworkers beats a Christmas party.