Are graphs really that hard?

I don't understand how both Nike and Garmin Connect can get their running pace graphs so wrong. Both the Nike+iPod and GPS data are noisy. Nike just picks random points along your run, while Garmin seems to have chosen to just show all the noise. The first option is incorrect, and the second isn't all that useful.

Since I've switched to using the Garmin 405 and the Garmin Connect site, I've found a way to see how each of the three sites I've mentioned plot the same run data. This is made possible by this fantastic site that can convert and upload a Garmin run to the Nike Running site. Then, slowgeek.com pulls the data from Nike and generates its own graphs. So lets take a look at today's sloppy attempt at a heart rate fartlek using the graphs for all three.

Nike+iPod

First, lets look at the Nike graphs. The thing to note for these two graphs is that they are the same run. The exact same data. The only thing that differs is that one view is in kilometers and one is in miles.

How is it that these graphs are the same run? These images underscore just how broken the Nike graphs are. It seems they pick a regular interval out of their noisy data, and plot them as if they were real. When you change the settings from kilometers to miles it picks new points, in different sections, and plots those. There is no rounding or cleaning up the noise in the data, which is crazy considering what the raw data looks like.

Garmin Connect


The Garmin site takes a different approach. As near as I can tell they don't interpret the data, but try to plot all of the raw data. Here is the same run as Garmin presents it.

This is starting to look a little more like my run, and I'm sure this is an accurate representation of the raw data coming off the watch. You can see what was going on, somewhat. The first and last kilometer or so of this run include some messy data. I start from the middle of downtown Vancouver, right in the middle of tall buildings, so the GPS signal is all over the place for a bit. But then you see some somewhat regular alternations of pace. My goal for this run was to alternate running hard until my heart rate hit 160bpm, slack off until it dropped to 140bpm, and then crank it back up. You can see that. Somewhat.

Slowgeek

 The Slowgeek site presents a very different looking graph.

Now this is how my run felt. After the initial static of running in tall buildings (I assure you I did not run at 3min/kilometer at any point) it looks exactly like it felt. I alternate between running hard and backing off, until I get dog tired and everything falls apart at the end. Now that was my run. How much was that my run? Compare it to my heart rate graph from the Garmin site.

Look at the resemblance between the Slowgeek pace graph and the Garmin heart rate data. Uncanny. The Slowgeek representation of pace perfectly matches the effort exerted based on heart rate. It isn't that the Garmin graph is wrong, it is just that all that noise doesn't match reality as well as the Slowgeek interpretation.

What gives?

How is it that Slowgeek, a hobby site created by one guy, gets it right while both Garmin and Nike get it wrong. This is their business! Worse, Rasmus (who created both slowgeek and the PHP programming language) has contacted Nike a number of times and told them how to fix this. It isn't magic. From the slowgeek forums:

The math involved tries to do its best using something called a LOWESS curve. It uses locally weighted polynomial regression where each point is derived by weighted least squares regression over the local span for that point. Basically it means that it tries to pick out the trend in the data. Noisy peaks or valleys will be smoothed out in the process.

I sure wish the professionals cared as much as some random geek. I mostly love the Garmin equipment and site. But I plan to continue to use slowgeek for its superior pace graphs, and better graphs for historical data.

Strikes and Gutters

Amazing what can happen in a week...

A week ago today I had a fantastic run. It was one of the most enjoyable 20k runs I've ever done. I dropped in to an easy quick pace and never felt tired. It was one of those runs that makes me love running, a scenic out and back from my house past Kitsilano Beach. I was passing people effortlessly and it didn't even seem like work to hold a good pace.

Then on Tuesday, another good run. This was my out, back and to work run with hills. Not quite as good a pace, but with the hills and so soon after a fast 20k I was pretty pleased with it.

Somewhere between then and now it has all fallen appart. After this decent morning run in to work, and a bit of a deadline-driven stressful work day, we went out to see Joe Cocker and Tom Petty. Both bands were surprisingly good and we were up pretty late. But I was in good shape to handle another busy day at work on Wednesday. I think Wednesday is where things started to go off the rails. That evening Nora bumped her head. Hard. So Katie ran her to Children's hospital and I stayed home so we didn't have to wake Eliza up. But I couldn't really sleep, and Katie and Nora didn't make it back until morning. (Nora is fine, but it is good we brought her in). So I was in terrible shape Thursday, running on a two night sleep deficit with extra helpings of stress.

But having had a fantastic string of runs I thought I should get in a lunch run. It might even make me feel better, I told myself. Heck the ultra-marathoners go without sleep that long and never even stop running, so buck up! So, off I go on my 7k loop around Lost Lagoon. It wasn't even raining, all that hard. Yet. But rain it did. What started as a refreshing cool mist turned into a dump. I wound up with my shirt and shorts stuck to me like a Corona T-shirt on a girl-gone-wild. I spent the first half of the run trying to keep my pace high and shield my iPod Touch from the deluge by holding it face down, cupped under my left hand. 

That didn't work. Almost exactly half way into my run, on the other side of Lost Lagoon, my iPod turned itself up to eleven and could not be adjusted. Moisture had found its way into the volume rocker switch and shorted out the contact that turns up the volume. I paused the run and started playing with it to see if I could get it to work, but my stomach dropped as the iPod spontaneously rebooted. Losing the run data was the least of my worries. A water-soaked iPod spontaneously rebooting can't be a good sign. I tried to power down, but it rebooted itself again. 

Thinking the iPod was likely fried, I figured I'd hoof it back to work and see if I could dry it out. Unfortunately, as soon as I started to run my left calf knotted up really bad. It was all I could do to make it back to work. I had to run/walk just to make it back in. It was the worst run I've had in years, after nothing but improvements for a couple months.

So the iPod works fine once it dried out (pro tip: put wet electronics in a bowl of dry rice to draw the moisture out). I gave myself a couple days rest, and my calf has been fine. So, I figure it's time for a repeat of last Sunday. I gear up for a long easy run. It is a beautiful day and I have a fresh soundboard recording of the Phish concert they played last night. I was excited to zone out and cover some miles. But two kilometers in I felt a twinge of pain. It got progressively worse. After pausing a couple of times, it was clear that there was no sense in pushing myself, and I hopped on the SkyTrian by Science World, and then a bus up Commercial. Run over...

Bummer...

I'm thinking lack of sleep and stress caused the calf problem in the first place. I hate to call it an injury; it is just some soreness and inflammation in a muscle. But then I guess that is what an injury is, isn't it? I'm wondering if the high stress and lack of sleep could have elevated cortisol levels in my system. Or maybe I was just so tired and distracted by the rain and malfunctioning iPod that I was running with terrible form. Maybe I was just pushing too hard too soon after long mileage.

Either way it is going to keep me from running. I think I should lay off until Thursday or Friday. Guess we'll see how it goes.

As a wise man once said "Sometimes you eat the bar. And, well, sometimes he eats you."

Pace, Phish, Evolution and Data Addiction

Considering how slow I am, some will find it comical how much I look at the data around my pace and distance. Some of it is from a genuine desire to know when I'm improving, and to be able to predict how well I could do in a race. That certainly is motivating, at least when the numbers show I'm getting faster. But, the painful truth is I might have a bit of a data addiction. As a case in point, I'll allow myself a bit of a digression from what has so far been a barefoot running blog (where are all the Non Sequiturs, anyway?).

Anyone who knows me well knows I like live music. While I like all kinds of music, from electronica to country to hardcore, the band I've seen the most is Phish. How many times have I seen Phish? Funny you should ask... I've spent the last couple of weeks obsessing over just that. I had kept a record of all the shows I had seen. I had an old copy of a book called the Pharmer's Almanac that listed all shows and their related setlists up through the Spring of '98. I'd gone through and marked the shows I had been at so I could thumb through and reminisce. As I kept seeing shows after the date where the book left off, I kept count but did not keep a record. Until recently I was completely convinced I had seen 90 Phish concerts. Since I will be seeing a couple shows this July (for the first time in 6 years) I thought I'd figure out exactly which shows I've seen. After spending a little time at the the excellent phish.net site, I came up with this list. I think there is one more show I haven't accounted for, as I don't think I would have counted the 8/14/1998 soundcheck as a show. It bugs me that I can't find the missing show. Was it Chula Vista, in 2003? That may just be it. But really, why would I care? Because it is fun to play with the data. For instance, the song I've seen the most is Maze. I've seen it 30 times. It is a good song, but I could never figure out why they play it so much. Turns out they don't. If you look at the Overplayed/Underplayed statistics on my own personal Phish Stats, you can see it is an anomaly. In the 89 shows I have listed, I should have only seen that song 18 times. Strange.   I can also see that there are 52 songs that I saw the very frist time Phish played them, including some classics they play all the time.

It is fun to think about, and http://phish.net makes it easy to play with, but it is probably a pointless addiction to plow through all that data.

Which brings me back to running, and trying to interpret the data from my Nikeplus iPod attachment. While I've been encouraged by my recent pace improvements, a run last week made me think that, maybe, the calibration is more off than I would like. According to the data I ran 7.75 km at 4'37"/km pace (4.82 mi @ 7'27"/mi). Looking back, I think this is the fastest run I've ever logged since I started using the iPod to track pace in 2006. This was certainly a fast run for me. No doubt. And I've ran a certified 10k at a faster pace than this in the past, so it isn't completely out of the realm of possibility. But outliers like this make me nervous about the calibration of the equipment. Can it really be my fastest run in years? Is barefoot and minimalist running driving that much of an improvement? Really?

If the pace is off the distance will be off, right? So, I went out and mapped my lunch run on the mapmyrun.com site.  It comes out to 7.34k, while my logged run reads 7.75k, roughly 95% accurate. So, plugging in the numbers at an online pace calculator, my pace may well have been 4:53/km rather than 4:37/km. It is still a good pace for me, but not as good as I had thought: 16 seconds per kilometer slower, or more than two and a half minutes over the course of a 10k. It is not the fastest run I've ever logged, as I had thought. The good news is, looking back at the data, it is still impressive. The last time I matched that pace was during a short run on May 17th, 2007.

My seat of the pants feelings about my runs are correct. I'm seeing improvements. Now to see if I can feed that data back into the iPod to improve accuracy. When I complete a run, the iPod offers a calibrate option. That way you can set a completed run to a known distance. I did that for the Sun Run 10k. It is not a well documented feature. I don't know if it simply calibrates that one run, or if it feeds that data back for future runs. I guess we'll have to find out. Next time I do the Lost Lagoon run I'll stick strictly to my mapped route and calibrate it to 7.34 after the fact.

So I'm obsessing about details of both my runs and the concerts I've seen. I'm not really OCD, but I do like to pour over all this data. And just how does this data addiction relate to running in general? Does it? Well, I just finished reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougal (a fantastic book everyone should read) and came across an interesting idea. Stick with me here... (Wait, WTF?!? You are still here?)  A major premis of the book, besides being an interesting story about an obscure ultra-marathon that was staged in the Mexican wilderness, is that humans evolved to run. We are better distance runners than any other animal. Our build allows us to conserve energy while running steadily, while our hairless body covered with sweat glands helps us cool and recover on the go. No other animal in the world can beat us at a marathon or longer, not even a horse. We evolved that way for persistance hunting: chasing and tracking animals until they overheat and die. Obviously running is a big part of that, but when researchers attempted it they failed. The animals would disappear, fold themselves back into the herd and the hunters would wind up chasing fresh animals. But a South African man named Louis Liebenberg found the answer. He became interested in the origin of logic and scientific thought in human prehistory so he dropped out of society to go live with the Kalahari Bushmen, who were as prehistoric a culture as still exists. During his time with the Bushmen, Louis learned persistance hunting. Running was only half the equation; it turns out it takes a lot of brains as well as running.

"When tracking an animal, one attempts to think like an animal in order to predict where it is going," Louis says. "Looking at its tracks, one visualizes the motion of the animal and feels that motion in one's own body. You go into a trance like state, the concentration is so intense. It's actually quite dangerous, because you become numb to your own body and can keep pushing yourself until you collapse."

Visualization... empathy... abstract thinking and forward projection: aside from the keeling-over part, isn't that exactly the mental engineering we now use for science, medicine, the creative arts? "When you track, you're creating causal connections in your mind, because you didn't actually see what the animal did," Louis realized. "That's the essence of physics." With speculative hunting, early human hunters had gone beyond connecting the dots; they were now connecting dots that existed only in their minds.

Speculative tracking and persistance hunting probably drove our evolution; made us who we are by rewarding efficient running bodies and the ability decipher almost random scratches in the dirt. While running was a huge part of why we survived, the other half of the equation was the ability to collect and collate data.

So not only are my running and my data addiction related, they are at the core of who we are as a species. Beter than any other land animal on the planet, we can settle in to a nice comfortable run and cover huge amounts of ground. Similarly, we can take disparate information from multiple sources and see patterns, connections and causalities. We can take two seemingly unrelated points of data, non sequitors in the conversation between us and our environment, and fill in the blanks and find causal connections. You see what I did there?

Improving Pace

It has been a consistent theme of this blog that I think my pace is improving since I switched to minimalist and barefoot running. Well, I think there is now enough data to back it up. I've been using the Nike + iPod system for a long time, with a couple disruptions (having lost my iPod, etc.). The slowgeek.com site has some great graphs for looking at the Nike + iPod data. So, what is the verdict?

I have logged 2000 kilometers since 2006, in 305 runs. The last couple of years, I haven't been very fast. I purchased my Vibram Fivefingers KSO shoes on April 15th (6 weeks ago today, as I write this). In the 16 runs I've done since then (not counting a handfull of barefoot runs, which are not logged and are significantly slower) my pace has improved dramatically. At first, some people said it was probably enthusiasm for my new gear, and simply psychological. That may well be, but I seem to be getting more enthusiastic as time goes on. I've logged 16 runs since then: 126 kilometers. Take a look at the above image, which is a snip from my Pace over Time graph. That is quite a jump and it perfectly coincides with buying the VFFs. If it's simply that I'm excited about new gear I find it surprising that I've maintained that enthusiasm over the 16 runs, and that my excitement seems to be increasing. I think something else is going on.

Another thought I've had, and that others have echoed, is that my pace is increasing because I'm running more. The data doesn't back that up either. In this image from my monthly runs graph the light red is 2009 and the dark red is 2010. In 2009 I logged nearly twice as many miles in April, and almost as many in May. But check out the Pace over Time graph above. I'm a full minute per kilometer faster now. What gives? There isn't a backlog of months of strong training this year either. I hardly ran at all this Winter.

In the short amount of distance since I took up minimalist running, it can't be all fitness improvements. Sure, I think there are benefits to barefoot running that improve the muscles in your feet and calves. But I can't see how suddenly after a regular amount of training I could see my pace jump up a minute per kilometer. I think these improvements are around increased efficiency in my gait. I've always read that the best way to improve your pace was to increase your turnover and shorten your stride. You see it in races. Several times I've been huffing and puffing up some hill, fighting the good fight, and some person comes around and pulls away doing the marathon shuffle: little quick steps, not lifting their feet high, quick turnover. I've worked on that in the past, counting footfalls per minute and trying to increase my turnover, and I think that is some of how I was so much faster in 2005/2006 (that and working out with the Santa Cruz Track Club). But with the Vibrams and barefoot running this kind of gait just comes naturally. I don't have to think about it.

The improvements I've seen have required no real changes to my training patterns, and that boggles my mind.  I'm excited by the prospect of how fast I could be if I applied myself. I feel like if I applied myself (actual speedwork, hills, consistant distance and a long run every week) I could actually close in on my 44 minute 10k PR and my 1:47 half marathon PR. I doubt I could do it for the Summerfast 10k in July, but for the first time in years I think I can run that fast again in the future.

Maybe my running will peak in my 40s instead of my 30s. If it does, I hope I'll be sitting around in 10 years saying "maybe my running will peak in my 50s instead of my 40s!" Hell, at this rate I'll qualify for the Boston Marathon before I'm 60. I'll be a shoe-in in my 80s!

Here is to a bright future as a mid-pack runner.

Cheers.

A couple good runs.

So far this week I've had a couple of great runs in the Vibram Fivefingers. Actually, that is a bit of an understatement. I had one pretty good run, and one fantastic run. The first run was a bit more than 10k on my out and back and then to work run on Monday morning.

I can't complain about that: longish run at a decent pace, squeezed in before work on a Monday. 10.8km at a 5:24/km pace. That is a great way to kick off the week. I'm not getting in a fast 10k every day like some people, but it put me in a great mood for a Monday.

I took Tuesday off from running and ducked out for my regular lunch run today. Man I felt fast. I knew I went out too fast but I didn't care. I figured if it felt that good then "what the heck?" I could limp in the last half if I needed too. But I felt pretty good the whole time.

The run starts with a downhill and ends with an uphill, so I guess I shouldn't sweat the slower split times too much. I hadn't felt this fast in a long time. I was passing other runners, relaxed and easy, when often I'm trying to just hold an OK pace. Early in the run I passed a couple people and felt great. But then there was an old guy with grey hair up ahead. I lost sight of him around a corner for a bit, and when I rounded the corner it was clear he was pulling away. My brain had two thoughts at the same time:

• "That old, grey-haired guy shouldn't be pulling away from me!"
• "Holy Crap! I am an old grey-haired guy!

And so it was on. I picked up the pace slightly. It must have been around 1.5km on the graph. I caught him & passed (he actually looked like he was in much better shape than me) with no problem, and he slipped way back behind me. I felt great up until about the 3km mark, when a pack of three real runners passed me. I was out of gas, and it was a bit demoralizing after having passed eight or ten runners and feeling strong. But I knew I came out too fast, and I guess pushing yourself is how you get faster, right? So I just held an OK pace around Lost Lagoon, and then tried to pick up pace once I was back to the pavement by the Vancouver Rowing Club at Coal Harbor. I had some mixed success after that, with a couple of inconsistant slowdowns. But, I didn't fall off too much. 

Going back through my stats on slowgeek.com, I was pretty shocked. The average pace for the run was 4:40/km (7:31/mile). The last time I held a pace that quick was a 4km run in October, 2006. Wow. Three and a half years? Today was a really awesome run. Fast and fun. Now I just need to keep up the pressure to make sure it wasn't an outlier. I'm hoping I can maintain the upward trend on my pace over time graph.

I'm even more excited about barefoot/minimalist running. I'm getting faster because of it, I'm convinced. Hope to get out for another completely barefoot run soon: maybe tomorrow if the rain stops.

53:22

So after all that obsessing over times, things turned out fantastic. Fifty three minutes was the absolute bottom of what I thought would be possible, so I'm thrilled. It was a fun race too, despite being frustrated for some of it. Overall this was the most enjoyable Sun Run I've done.

Looking back through my times, I did 57:52 last year (guess I was misremembering that in my last post) and my training was roughly the same. My first Sun Run after moving to Vancouver was 49:32. At the time it was a bit of a disappointment, as I was more than 5 minutes slower than my PR. But, having kids and shifting responsibilities and dark cold winters compared to Santa Cruz kept taking their toll, and I got slower and slower. So, it is nice to see my pace moving in the other direction. Barefoot running (well, almost barefoot) has me excited about running again. I'm already looking forward to my next run, wondering if there is a small 10k on a faster course and if I could be in decent shape for a Fall half marathon.

I saw one other guy with Vibram Fivefingers and chatted with him a bit before the race started. He'd been training since January and was in the Vibram Sprints. There was another guy I didn't get to talk to who was actually barefoot. I want to do some barefoot runs soon. I can't imagine running a 10k with no shoes. Maybe if I switch to a Garmin GPS instead of my Nikeplus foot pod I would be more inclined to, but I love to geek out about the numbers and stats of my runs over time. As the start approached I was a bit nervous. It is further than I've ever ran in the Vibrams, and some shorter runs in the buildup left me seriously sore. Right up to the start I was worried I may have made a mistake.

But, this run was fun. After an initial quick pace down the gentle decline of Georgia Street, a couple things slowed me down. First, was the bottleneck that happens every Sun Run, as the course cuts up and through Stanley Park. This area of the race funneled 51,419 runners through a section of road that is less than 2 driving lanes wide at some points. You can't help but wind up behind a wall of slowpokes.

Then you play the game of looking for an opening, darting through it quick, and trying to pick a line through all the people, until the next time you are blocked. To make it more complicated, everyone behind you thinks you are the slowpoke and is looking for the same openings. It sounds frustrating, and it is, but it's also what makes running a big race like the Sun Run interesting. It must be boring for the elite runners up front who never have to deal with the traffic.

Not long after the crowds thin out is the brutal climb up to Burrard Bridge. That big loop is steep. That is the low point of the graph above. It is hard enough to maintain any kind of a pace faced with a hill like that. To make things worse, this is the point in the race where people who should have lined up further back in the start section decide to walk. They don't move to the right and then start to walk. They just give up: right in front of you.

What I wasn't prepared for was almost getting taken out by a hipster. Some girl with a shiny chrome lowrider bicycle, with a sissy bar and a springer front end, decided she just had to cross the street. Who knows? Maybe Urban Outfitters was having a sale on ironic t-shirts. I nearly wound up on the pavement in tangle of springs, spokes and 80's sunglasses. It wouldn't have been pretty.

But a beautiful thing about that hill is that after the brutally steep roads looping up to the bridge, the first half of the bridge is just steep enough. With the early part of the hill weeding out the non-runners, the top part of the hill makes me feel fast. I always seem to pass tons of people in this part of the run. The course is wide open at this point, plenty of room. At the top of the bridge I was in great spirits and able to hold a decent pace down the back side and for some time on the flats.

Between 6.5 and 7.5 kilometers on the course I was tired. Really tired, and it shows in my pace. There are some twists and turns there, and the course narrows again making it more crowded. But I felt beat, and was pacing myself with slower runners than I should have. It was around here I kept thinking that it was a huge mistake to mostly do 7km runs while training. I had that miserable, tired before the end of a race feeling, that sometimes means it is all going to fall apart. Around this time I got a little hot spot on my right big toe and thought it was blistering, increasing my gloom. But I snapped out of it after awhile. I was able to accelerate a couple times, before my time drifted back down.

Again my head drifted back to the times. I had decided not to look at the ipod for pace and time in case it was off. Interestingly, the iPod has a glitch sometimes where it doesn't give the voiceovers, and that happened on this run. I'm not sure if that is good or bad. It turns out the iPod read 9.34km when I crossed the finish line. I'm not sure if that would have motivated me or crushed my spirits when my ass was dragging. I'm a bit concerned with the accuracy since I switched to the VFFs. It seems my pace fluctuates more than with regular shoes, and I'm not sure if the iPod can deal with that. My pace was much more constant last year, and the accuracy was great, logging the 10k at 9.97km. I'm hoping I can get it a little closer with further calibrating, but I guess 93% accurate isn't so far off as a training tool. I love the new feature where you can calibrate a run to a known distance after the fact though. I'm not sure if this also improves the accuracy of future runs, but we'll see.

I felt good for the rest of the run, including the Cambie Street Bridge, which has been demoralizing for me in the past and I was a bit worried. But I ran strong. The toe didn't hurt. I found my wind and kicked it out up over the bridge, holding a good pace through the flats to the finnish. Can't tell you how excited I was when I saw the time on the iPod. Blissed out.

I love these goofy shoes and I'm already looking forward to my next run. Maybe tomorrow morning.

Another Good Run. Bad Idea?

Had another great run today in the Vibram Fivefingers. I've been interested in what the calibration last weekend would do to my standard lunch run at work. It seems like things are more in line, and I'm still holding a decent pace. If you look back at my recent runs it looks like my calibration did reset things a bit. On my lunch loop today the run was recorded as 7.31km. The three runs prior to calibration came in at 7.71, 7.87, and 7.58. It isn't that far off, but I think the new number after calibration is closer to reality. Guess we'll see how how it logs my run in the Sun Run this weekend (assuming I can pull it off in the VFFs).

I've been fighting some foot pain in my left foot, and have been trying to get enough rest between runs. It has been a little frustrating. The pain has been strange: mostly on the top of my left foot, and very bad in the morning. But, after 10 to 15 minutes I feel fine. It is unlike other pain I've had in that it goes from feeling like I'm actually injured to feeling fine in a very short time. After my April 28th run, I was a little worried. I had some significant pain. I almost skipped running last weekend, but the weather was so good... and I wanted to calibrate the iPod... and... and... and...

I think it is easy to overdo it when transitioning to the VFFs. Since I started running I've been in running shoes: almost exclusively the GEL Kayano. I have years of training, muscle memory, and a better cardiovascular system than I've ever had. In all that time my feet muscles tendons and bones have been restricted. My foot has been held in place. I've hand my natural pronation restricted. i've been heel striking, and rolling off the front of a shoe that rolls up under the toes so they don't have to flex back. And here I've mostly switched to running with a "shoe" that does none of that. I'm landing on my forefoot and softly catching the weight of my body. My foot has been compressing, absorbing energy into my arch, springing back and returning that energy to the ground while the foot rotates from the outside midfoot to the inside ball, and pushing off of the two biggest toes as they get stretched back. None of my foot is used to this. My brain loves it and my quads love it and my cardio loves it. My feet really love it, but I think they would love it much more in moderation.

So, glancing through http://birthdayshoes.com I come upon an article on Making the Transition to Minimalist Marathon Running in Vibram Five Fingers. OK, it appears I am making a very common mistake.

Well, I started out with a few small runs after my knee was feeling better, a few km's at a time and they felt GREAT! I could instantly feel the change it had made to my gait. I was running far more upright, with shorter steps and of course I was landing on my forefoot first. I had the obligatory calf pain, but as I had read this was "something we all had to go through!" ... Well, that was a big mistake! A few days later, my left foot ceased up (I later found out related to an extremely stiff calf!) and I was back to square one. Or was I? Was it due to the FF's? Was it my poor form? I was at a loss.

Yikes! That's me! Right down to the fact that it is my left foot and I have short, stiff calves.

So I've been trying to make sure I get enough rest between runs. I didn't run from Saturday to Monday (today). The rest did me good. I was no longer feeling injured, but I was worried about going out again. I actually got some butterflies before my run. But once I got on the pavement I felt great. Really great. I felt quick and confident and strong. I felt good the entire run. No issues. On the plus side, I'm only running 7km so far, not the 25km of that guy. Guess I'll need to see how I feel tomorrow. I think I've got enough rest time before the Sun Run that I should be able to run it. It's just 10k, right?

Am I making a mistake? Of course. Am I making a mistake big enough that I shouldn't do it? Lets see.

Calibration Resets Expectations.

So I went to the track a calibrated the ipod today. It seems to have taken the wind out of my sails a bit, with my actual pace a little slower than I've been reporting. Still, it is a slight step up from what I was doing before I got the Vibrams. I first did a 400m calibration walk. Then, a 400m calibration run. After that, I ran a steady, quick (for me) 4km (10 laps on a 400m track). The results of the iPod were off I tiny bit, so I calibrated that run to 4km after the fact to exactly 4km.

 I wasn't aware of that feature. So, with at least that one run perfectly calibrated, I held a pace of 5'30". So that is 22 seconds per kilometer off from the uncalibrated iPod. So that would come out to roughly 3.7 minutes slower in a 10k than my iPod thought I was.

Fairly steady pace. Not pushing too hard, but a bit faster than I've been running. Looking back, the last time I held that pace was June 10th, 2008: almost 2 years ago.

Both are pretty uninteresting graphs. But, I can take solace in the fact that my actual pace has come up a tiny bit, if not as much as I had first hoped. That said, it has been so much fun running almost barefoot I shouldn't even care about pace, despite all these graphs. After setting the 4km run, I wasn't sure that it fed that value back to improve accuracy. I hope it does. But in case it doesn't I ran another 2km calibration on the track. If I remember correctly,  when I stopped the calibration it read 1.85km.  So that would be 150m shy over 2km: 75 out of 1000 meters. 7.5% off / 92.5% accurate. That does not sound good. I've been closer with my Nikeplus accuracy in the past. I hope the second calibration got it closer to reality.

Listen to me. I sound like frickin' Rain Man, except I've probably had a math error. Someone correct me. Anyhow, the 5:30/km (8:51/mi) pace was real, it was measured. It is not very fast, but it is slightly faster than I've been, and it seems like a good place to start working on improvements.

Anyhow, glad I got out. I was faster than the 4 other runners on the track (which is kinda sad).

Looking Forward and Looking Back

I've had a couple great runs in the VFFs, but haven't been able to post for awhile. The iMac is once again at the Apple Store. How many geniuses does it take to fix a faulty temperature sensor?

I'm getting faster!

This Monday I went out for my 7km loop from work. It felt pretty fast. While it wasn't exactly effortless, I felt like I had much more gas in the tank at the end of my run. I could pick the pace right up and hold it longer. For the first time in a long time I was passing some people. In the last third of the run I was able to kick it back into gear and have fun instead of just trying to make it back.

After the run I wanted to confirm my thoughts and double checked my pace. It turns out that the last time I was able to hold a 5'09"/km pace was November 3rd, 2007. That was a 16km leg of the Haney to Harrison Relay race. So in the 160 runs I've logged over the last two and a half years, I've not held the pace that I was able to on Monday. I've had periods of very active training during that time: at least as focused as I've been over the last month. For instance look at the monthly runs graph from my current Summary Statistics:

Note that June of 2008 was very similar in terms of distance to now (April 2010), other than the fact that I had a better preceding month in '08. But the fastest pace I could hold in June 2008 was 5'20" over 4km. I'm a little faster now, over longer distances, with slightly less training. The speed isn't that different, so maybe I'm splitting hairs. But, I went out again on Wednesday and came back with an even faster time:

Ok, ok... four one hundredths of a second per kilometer. I really am splitting hairs here. This falls well within the margin of error of the Nikeplus iPod gadget. Still, says it is an improvement and I'll take what I can get.

I really think running in the VFFs is making me faster. Two people I've mentioned that to have said that it is probably just enthusiasm. To that I reply "either way, I don't care as long as I'm getting faster!" But I really think there is more to it than a love of new gear. Running in the VFFs is not a little different. It is a lot different: completely different. I certainly welcome the sharp uptick in my Pace over Time graph.

While it is tough to compare running with my Asics to running in the VFFs, my gut feeling is that towards the end of my run I've got more gas in the tank and can hold a quicker pace while I'm tired. It turns out there may be something to it...

A nice find on the inter-tubes...

I recently came across a fantastic paper on barefoot running that pulls together information from many different sources. You really should read Why Running Shoes Don't Work by Steve Magness. It includes information from studies that show (among other things) that the cushion of shoes may cause harder impacts than no cushion, etc. But, the thing I found most interesting backs up my gut feeling about having more energy later in a run.

Running shoes do not utilize the elastic storage and return as well as barefoot or minimal shoes. More energy is lost with shoes than with barefoot running (Alexander and Bennett, 1989). In addition, in some models of shoes, the arch is not allowed to function like a spring. The arch of the foot can store around 17% of kinetic energy (Ker, 1987). Given these results, its not surprising that running barefoot when compared to running with shoes is more efficient. Several studies have shown a decreased VO2 at the same pace with barefoot running, even when weight is taken into account. This should be no surprise as I mentioned above, without elastic recoil VO2 requirement would be 30-40% higher. Running in a minimal shoe allows for better utilization of this system.

 So I'm not crazy!

Well, let me qualify that... In this instance there may be data that corroborates my perceived increase in cardiovascular endurance while running in minimalist shoes.


Looking forward, looking back.

Running in the VFFs has me exited about running again. If I continue to improve I could have my speed back to a reasonable clip pretty soon. Can I ever reach that 44'22" 10k PR? I guess we'll have to wait and see. For now, my goal is to simply complete the Vancouver Sun Run 10k. I'd like to keep it under an hour but just running a 10k in the VFFs is good enough. I can't help but think, given the pace of my recent runs, that I could improve my time over the last couple of 10ks I've done. My Sun Run time last year was 57'52" Guess I'll find out in a couple weeks.


So, what's the downside?

I'm not sure it is really a downside, but I've been surprisingly sore. I guess it stands to reason that I would be. I've been wearing the same Asics GEL-Kayano model shoes for many years. These are as structured and cushioned a shoe as you can get: thick heel, squishy foam, motion control, shock absorbing gel, arch support. They have been doing much of the work that my muscles, bones and arch should have been doing, and I have some developmental catch up to do. Like wearing a cast, the muscles haven't been able to their job, and have atrophied.

At least I hope that is all. I'm sore enough that I'm worried a bit about injury. When I wake up in the morning I can't actually walk. I hobble around favoring my left foot, wondering how I'm going to get through the day. But unlike other soreness I've had, it works itself out pretty quick. A few minutes of movement and I can walk OK. A few more and I'm fine. Every time I get up I go from thinking I'm actually injured to feeling fine in a very short time. It is different from other pain I've had. If my back hurts like that, I know I'll be out of commission for awhile. My quads or other muscles, 2 days. It is very odd.

My current plan is to take a couple days off, and maybe try to get a run in this weekend that is more than 7km.

We'll see how it goes.

Nose Dive

So for my third time in a week since I got them, I went out with the Vibrams. Today I did my 7km lunch run around Lost Lagoon. This was the longest run I've done in them so far, and it was a bit of a mixed bag. I went out too fast. I knew I went out too fast while I was doing it, but I just didn't want to rein it in. I just felt too good. As you can see from the graph, I didn't exactly sustain the pace.

Still, I feel pretty good about the run and the graph, considering how bad it dropped. (I'll get to that). Out of the gate I was super quick (for me lately). But even after the first two stoplights, shown as pauses in green, I held a good pace for the first half. For instance, here is the graph of roughly the same run in my Asics just over a week ago:

For the first half of the run I averaged much much faster than usual. While slower, my average for the second half was at least as good. But, the old run is much more consistant and steady. With the Vibrams my pace is all over the place. I actually think it is accurate that my pace is fluctuating for a couple of reasons. First, it supports the sense of acceleration I mentioned in an earlier post. Sure enough I can accelerate with less effort, but can't hold it for long yet. Second, the distance for the run seems accurate (the slightly longer run I did before had a different route at the start). Third, pacing myself with a runner who passed me, I could tell I was fluctuating. I think it is a good thing.

The bad news from the run today is that the blister on my big toe is back, and this time I was wearing the toe socks. I noticed it right when I paused in the middle of the run. Again, I wished I had a camera. During that pause, on a little foot bridge, a squirrel came up on the rail to within a foot of me. Anyhow, maybe the blister hadn't healed completely. I'm not used to getting blisters, so I don't know how they work. I did some googling, and stumbled across another great resource the Minimalist Runner email group. It is an awesome site, but it seems blisters is a pretty common thing. So, I may need to toughen up, or change my gait and toe-off a bit. During the run it felt pretty bad, and I expected a huge popped blister. But it isn't quite that bad. It is deep in the toe pad and tender, but I think it will heal without ripping. It is fine to walk on now, but it did mess with my pace more than my legs or cardio capacity.

So,  I want to heed my body's warning about doing too much too fast, but I think I'm failing. I've done about 15km in them in less than a week. That is more than I've been running at all lately. But I like it so much I want to take them out every run. It will have to be back to the Asics next time, but I'm optomistic about doing the Sun Run in these.

I had posted a picture of the goofy shoes on my Facebook and my old friend Shady Brady responded with this link. So very, very funny considering.

JJ Casuals - watch more funny videos

Round two: feet versus the world.

Round two with the Vibram Fivefingers. The ankles and calves felt good enough to use the goofy un-shoes for my morning run in to work. This time I wore the Injinji toe socks, and had no hint of blister. Once my calves and ankles had warmed up the run felt fantastic. So, that first acceleration where my pace shoots up to nearly 3:20/km (in the raw data) is inaccurate. I had attached the pouch for my Nikeplus foot pod around the closed velcro strap of the shoe instead of around the top part of the strap so it gets secured between the velcro. This allowed it to slide down to the side in a vertical position. I glanced at the iPod a couple of times and noticed the higher than expected pace & eventually noticed the sensor being out of position. The interesting thing here is that it seems like it may have corrected. The sensor slipped where you see the steep increase in pace in the raw data, but I didn't notice until just before the green pause line. I wonder if the software somehow adjusts for anomalies as you go? Anyhow, the data looks correct after the pause, including the nice acceleration to the 4:00/km pace range.

About that acceleration... One thing I noticed on the run was that when my pace had slacked off, I could fairly easy bring it back up. I'm not sure if it is just perception or real, but there was this feeling that I could increase cadence with less effort than before. It could be that the KSOs are lighter, or that I'm taking shorter steps. Or it could just be in my head. The sidewalk felt hard today. Not bad, but it felt great when I could run in the grass next to the sidewalk. My muscles felt great, and not a hint of blisters.

When I got to the office there was a crowd of people in the break room getting breakfast, coffee, etc. when I got a glass of water. Everyone wanted to know about the shoes. Some knew what they were and had been wanting to try them. One person seemed shocked that I had ran in them. "How much cushioning do they have?"  Umm. None. That's the point. Interestingly, another coworker who isn't a runner launched into a a brief explanation of all the studies showing that cushioning actually sends more shock up your legs and spine.

Here is an interesting talk by Barefoot Ted, a minimalist running enthusiast who runs ultra-marathons in the Vibram KSOs and one of the subjects of the book Born to Run (which I have not yet read). It starts a little slow, but it is worth sticking it out.

Freaky Shoes Drive Me to Blog

I've never had a blog. I've been on the Internet consistently since 1992. I write for a living.

Crazy, huh?

It gets more far fetched. You see, the thing driving me to blog is a new pair of shoes. Now, these aren't ordinary shoes. I just bought a pair of Vibram Fivefingers. These are some freaky looking shoes that let your foot work like it is barefoot. They even let your foot look like it is barefoot. 

I've been wanting to get on the barefoot running bandwagon for a long time. The first I really heard about barefoot running was from this whacked-out hippie's web site: http://therunningbarefoot.com/. He has had a barefoot running site since before I started running. I'm not even sure how I came across it the first time, but I tend to like what whacked-out hippies have to say. Sometimes they are right on the money. Sometimes they are just three sheets to the wind. Since then, there is mounting evidence that shoes (especially shoes that are heavy with cushioning and motion control features) are not good for us in the long run. 

But, there was really just one thing stopping me from loosing the shoes: the Nikeplus iPod feature. I'm hooked on it, along with the slowgeek site a friend put together. Somehow I feel like runs I do that don't wind up logged there just don't count. I love being able to look at it and realize that I'm slow because I didn't really run this winter, dropped a full minute per kilometer in pace since 2006, or even gain some comfort from the fact that March 2010 is the best March I've had (April is shaping up to be terrible). So, I've been hesitant just running without shoes at all. I've also not been interested in the early models of the Vibram Fivefingers because there was nowhere to mount the Marware pouch I use to secure the Nikeplus foot pod to my Asics Gel Kayanos. Plus, I couldn't find a retailer here in Vancouver, BC to try them on for fit. If I had been born in Kenya I wouldn't have these problems...

For awhile I considered simply going for a racing flat, or some other shoe with less structure, but haven't been able to stray from my Kayanos (which I've had many, many pairs of and always enjoyed). For awhile, I was considering ordering a pair of the Terra Plana EVO shoes. These look like fantastic shoes for barefoot running. try to wrap your mind around that sentence They seem like they would be as good as the Vibrams, or at least nearly as good. Maybe there is some benefit to having the toes completely separated. And, they have laces where I could attach my Nikeplus accelerometer. But, again I have nowhere to try them on. If I lived in the states I would have just ordered both shoes in a couple sizes from zappos.com and sent whatever I didn't want back for free, but that doesn't work in Canada. So I gave up. I decided to leave well enough alone and stick with my trusty runners that have more cushioning and technology than you can shake a stick at.

Then, at a concert the other night (Deerhunter and Spoon, if you must know) I saw someone walking around in the Vibram Fivefinger KSOs. These weren't like the Vibrams I had seen before. The material went further up the foot and had a velcro strap to keep them closed. It brought back my desire to try a more natural form of running. It made me think that would be a fantastic shoe for dancing barefoot at a concert without having to be barefoot. It got me wondering if you could attach the Nikeplus footpod to the strap. So the next day I spent a little time on the Google. The first thing I found was this blog. With a little more poking around I figured out that the local MEC had them in stock.

The Shoes


So, a couple days later I found myself in the local kayaking department of the local MEC. Hiding them in the kayak department was a good try, but it didn't work. There were five runners trying to share the one small bench trying on the Vibrams. NOTE: MEC, move them to the shoe department. After trying a couple sizes and running around the store a bit, I went with the size 44. That left me enough room to put them on with toe socks. The sales guy tried to tell me I should use them with socks, but I wanted to be able to wear them when it is cold, or if I have blister issues. So I wound up with some nice running socks that have separate toes as well. As you can see, the pouch holding my Nikeplus foot pod fits nicely on the velcro strap.

First Impressions


I try not to let my initial impressions of something take over too much. I'm prone to hyperbole.  I can absolutely love a new gadget, only to find the attraction wears off before too long. That said, these shoes feel amazing. I wore them out of the store. My family picked me up and we went out to dinner. My 4 year old thought they were cool, buy my wife was a little embarrassed. Why can't everyone agree with me that these shoes look awesome? They are instantly the most comfortable shoes to hang out in I've ever owned. They are better than five year old Birkenstocks. They are like going barefoot, but better. I feel like I'm a super-hero or a ninja in these things. When I got home I took the dog for a walk and did some light jogging in them: no idea how they will do on a real run. After wearing them all evening and running around a little bit, I have some predictions. I planned to run roughly 4k to work in them the next day, but it made me a little apprehensive. There is no padding. No support. Just some protection against cut and puncture.

After the walking around in them, one thing is certain. My ankles and feet are weak. My left foot in particular was complaining, somewhere under the bones on the outside, above the arch. My gut feeling was that I would not be able to run the entire way. I actually had a tough time sleeping, and laid awake a bit in the middle of the night wondering how it would go.

Run Day


In the morning I decided against wearing the socks. I wanted to get as much feel of the ground and running barefoot as I could. But before I even put the shoes on I felt a little twinge of pain in the pad of my big toe, like a very small splinter or the spine of a beavertail cactus like I used to get stuck in me as a kid chasing snakes and lizards in Nevada. It was there and annoying, but nothing I could see and minor enough to ignore. Next, when I got down to the street and fired up the Nikeplus app on the iPod touch, it complained that my footpod had a low battery. I had been hoping to compare my pace and distance with the footpod on the Vibrams with my existing runs. What are the chances that it would complain on this first run? One of those pods lasts a couple years. Anyhow, I figured it would work well enough for one run. According to the stats, I was slightly slower than usual.

But this doesn't seem to match my perception of the run. Twice when I checked pace, the iPod said I was running at 7:14/km. I know I was running faster than that. The grey line of raw data never even goes that slow. So during the run I was wondering if the low battery was causing it to miss data points. I guess I won't know until I have more runs under my belt with a new accelerometer.

But How Did They Feel?


These were an absolute blast to run in. I felt like a ninja: smooth and silent, no stomping and clomping. I could feel when I went from rough pavement to smooth concrete. I could feel and adjust to imperfections in the road. Cutting through grass my toes would sink in and separate a bit on the kick off. For the fist kilometer or so I was on the balls of my feet, and I was worried that my calves would give out. But once I settled into a pace I could drop my heels a little bit in the footfall, using the whole foot in my stride. If I accelerated, decelerated or had to go up or down a curb then I would naturally pick back up on to the balls. I could feel my brain automatically adjusting my feet and stride depending on what I was doing without having to actively think about it. But it was still there to think about after the fact, and it made the run really interesting. During the run I thought up a couple of analogies to describe it. Fist, it made me think that running in padded and structured shoes was a bit like wearing gloves to type: sure, you wont injure your fingers but you can feel what you are doing. At another point in the run I was equating it to wine. When you drink a wine that is not offensive, but not very interesting, it does the trick. It goes down, and it is wine and it may make you feel a bit warm and happy. When you drink a fantastic wine it engages your brain. From the smell to where the tastes hit on your tongue, to the subtle cherry, pepper, chocolate, or whatever flavors, to the subtle changing aftertaste. It makes you think. The Fivefingers are like that. They make you think about your form. Not in a active "I should now try running like this" kind of way, but in a passive "wow, it is interesting how my body is reacting to this" kind of way. My run was smooth and fluid. It was much more interesting. By the end I was wanting to do all of my runs in these shoes from now on.

But then I started feeling a hot spot on the pad of my big toe. After awhile, I realized it was going to be a blister, and right now it is a huge pillow of fluid. I'll spare you the picture. Is it the fault of the twinge I felt before the run, or is it that my feet aren't yet tough enough to have only a few millimeters of rubber between them and the pavement? Either way, I'm glad I bought the socks and I'll try them next time.

I'm hoping I can build up my feet strong enough that I can wear these shoes for the Vancouver Sun Run 10k. Ultimately, I would like to be able to do any distance (half marathon, of even a full some day) in them.

I guess we'll have to see.