Inspiration and backstory.

This past Friday, I was supposed to be going home to my parents' for the weekend. I missed the train I was supposed to be on, so I had some time to kill. When I saw Born to Run at the bookstore in the middle of the station, I decided to buy it so I could have something to read while I waited. A good friend had recommended it to me ages ago, and he has a track record of only suggesting excellent books. By the time I got to my parents' house about two hours later, I was halfway done with the book. When I finished it this afternoon, after reading select passages out loud in amazement to my fiancé, I was officially a barefoot convert.

I have accessory navicular syndrome. I damaged my foot when I was twelve; I was running in a field with my brothers and my foot landed in a hole and twisted underneath me. Ever since then, any sort of upright exercise was iffy at best for me. Standing for long periods of time is the worst, with walking not far behind. Running, of course, was out of the question for me. It hurt, and despite being a fairly active kid, I was entering the phase of adolescence in which it was much cooler to stand on the sidelines with your arms folded in gym class than it was to actually exert yourself and participate, so I quickly became very out of shape. I used to work at a sandwich shop when I was in college, and I would come home from shifts with my foot throbbing for days afterward with no cure in sight. I finally went to the doctor a year ago, and he took X-rays and told me that the only hope I had was custom made orthotics. He mentioned that there was a surgery to remove the extra bone in my foot, but that the results were mixed, so the orthotics would be my best choice. When I found out how expensive they were, I told them I would think about it.

I have always been puzzled by which shoes hurt me and which shoes don't. Since my injury, I have occasionally been inspired to buy new "real" sneakers with proper arch support and cushioning. I also one summer tried to wear Birkenstocks due to the hard and firm arch, thinking it would help support my injured foot. Without fail, these sorts of shoes made my foot ache in an inordinately short amount of time. I hobbled through Washington DC with my father in 2004 because I thought that the Birks would be my best walking choice. On the other hand, my daily footwear of choice has always been Converse All-Star High Tops (I have about twenty pairs in assorted colors) or my now worn down Reef flip flops. When I traveled to the outback of Australia while studying abroad there in 2007, I did wear sneakers for some of the hiking, but I predominantly wore my flip flops, despite ending up with red feet from all the sand. Miraculously, the 20+ miles that I walked over three days didn't leave me paralyzed in agony. I always had found this counter-intuitive to common beliefs that "flip flops are bad for you" because they have no arch support and "sneakers are good for you" because they are built to support and cushion your foot.

Over the past few months, I was tossing around the idea of starting to run. At this point in my life, I am no longer an active person by any stretch. In fact, my lifestyle is pretty tragically sedentary. I had the crazy idea that if I were to somehow strengthen my foot through exercise and running, then my foot would stop hurting. Again, this was completely counter-intuitive to what the doctor had told me would be best for me: wearing an orthotic and babying my foot for the rest of my life. I tentatively felt like I was on to a good idea, but the idea of starting to run was intimidating. It hurts me in more ways than one; I have embarrassingly pathetic physical endurance despite being thin so running more than a quarter of a mile leaves me gasping for air, and of course there is the issue of my foot quickly feeling like it's going to collapse underneath me. I mentioned my crazy "strengthening my foot to cure it" idea to a few people but was largely met with skepticism.

Then I read Born To Run. As an engineer, McDougall's discussions of how the arch of your foot is supposed to work made immediate and perfect sense to me. His story of eliminating his knee pain by running barefoot was inspiring, as were many other similar stories I have since found on the internet. But would running barefoot solve my particular problem? Most of the stories I read were about people with particular stress-related injuries in their knees and lower back pain. Does walking and running barefoot have anything to do with accessory navicular syndrome? I am going to find out. My hope is that by strengthening the muscles in my foot and legs, I can have a life without pain when I choose to walk a distance longer than a few miles, or hike in the woods, or do any of the other physical walking or running activities that my body should be able to do. I will be taking it slow, and carefully monitoring my progress, one step at a time.