I’m Jan, a 58 (nearly 59) year old man from Ghent, Belgium. I started running (at least seriously) in 2000, 2 years after my 18 year old son Lieven died from an asthma crisis, and after two years of heavy drinking and smoking. Since then, running was (and fortunately still is) my way of dealing with the hardships of life.
By October 2010, I had totaled nearly 17 000 km of shod running. That’s when my right knee started to hurt, which finally led to a knee surgery in April 2011. After 5 weeks, I gave in to my addiction and started running again, initially with success, until October of the same year, when pain in my right knee stopped me again. I went to another surgeon this time, and he also opted for a knee surgery, which took place in January 2012. His conclusion was that running days for me were over, given the state of the cartilage in my knee…
At the time of my first surgery, an article in a scientific magazine about the research by Prof. Daniel Lieberman on the difference in impact of heel strike versus forefoot strike got my attention, and between my two medical interventions, I started to include some runs with forefoot landing, still with my Asics running shoes. Initially, this left me often with sore calf muscles, but also allowed me to reinforce them. When I talked about this with the second orthopedic surgeon, he was extremely critical about changing a running form at my age, which was a challenge enough for me to give it a try…
So in March 2012, I started running barefooted in my home town, without much background knowledge. I started with runs of 1.5 km, 3 times a week (with some blisters now and then on my foot soles, but nothing serious), enthusiastically evolving to a weekly total of 15 km (3 times 5 km) after two months. At the end of April, a tendonitis at the top of my left foot stopped my effort for nearly six weeks. This led me to some serious reading about the subject of barefoot running and the right barefoot running form (Michael Sandler, Ken Bob Saxton, Jason Robillard), and with this knowledge, I started again in June, but very, very slowly. Apparently not slowly enough, because by the end of July, I encountered some right calf cramps. Fortunately, this only stopped me for a little more than a week.
Since August, I increased my weekly distance by not more than 10% per week, to arrive today at 25 to 30 km per week, with a 10 km long run, all barefooted. I developed an Excel file that keeps track of the maximum distance I run in 1, 2, 3 and 4 consecutive days and applying the 10% rule for my future distances to run. It seems to work fine, no more injuries, no more pain, no more sore feet, and a lot of fun. In the summertime I bought some aqua shoes on the internet to be prepared for the winter. I carry them with me on the long runs (just in case), but till now I never needed them, not even during the last couple of weeks when temperatures dropped below 0°C. I even have the impression that the cold enhances the fat accumulation in my footpads (they become a little harder with the cold), it makes them thicker and stronger. In the meantime my feet and lower legs have become amazingly strong (I also exercise them during office hours with golf balls underneath my desk) and my barefoot running form has become so natural that you barely hear me passing by.
Mostly, I do my runs in the streets of the centre of the city of Ghent (attracting a lot of attention and getting various reactions, positive and negative, but mostly amazement) and sometimes in one of the natural parks we still have in this part of the world. After running, I feel no pain whatsoever, not even in my twice injured knee, and the outlooks are that it will stay that way for my future running career. My first ambition is to stay injury free while doing 35 km a week with a barefoot 15 km long run by January 23th (my birthday). My second ambition is to persuade friends to follow me in the barefoot revelation…
Leave a Reply