At the end of the video, Christopher McDougall puts on a pair of Vibram FiveFinger Sprints. I'd bought a pair of these two years before, but had largely given up wearing them. The fact that someone who wore these had written a book about running piqued my interest, so I ordered the book Born to Run
, read it in one sitting, and had my mind blown. The next night I read this book again. I can't remember the last time I'd read a book two times in a row. The premise that McDougall presents in that book is, simply put, incredible. The next day, I got my Sprints back out of the closet, and started hiking and running in them again. And I started reading, trying to find out if McDougall's hypothesis, while incredible, might actually be true.McDougall's premise, writ large, is that we've been misled by Progress. We've trusted in Scientific Authority, and they've taken us down the wrong path, a path that is not only making us less happy, but is actually injuring us and our children. McDougall's premise in Born to Run is limited to the world of running shoes, but over the last year I've learned that the same premise applies in other important areas of our lives. Areas in which I'd assumed the scientific and commercial establishments could be trusted, only to find out over the last year that they could not. On a number of fronts we've been led down the wrong path, in the wrong direction, and it's having an enormous negative impact on our health. My goal is to present information that will allow you to Yell Stop, and head in a better direction.
I started this blog to share some of the enormous amount of research and reading I've done over the last year. A good quantity of it has been shared already on Barefoot Ted's (one of the characters from Born to Run ) Minimalist Running email group, and can be found here. Unfortunately the search interface is horrible; which is odd, as it's a Google Group, but there you go.
I'll be reposting and updating some of that material, and adding new stuff as I go along. Welcome.
Looks like Harry beat me to being your first commenter. I like the comparison you make between shoes and other facets of life where we have been mislead. I was listening to Micahel Pollan's In Defense of Food while mowing the lawn the other day, and I kept reflecting on how similar the situation with food is to the situation with shoes. We've been told for so long that fat is evil by the establishment, only to find out that most of what we have heard is wrong. Amazing, and another good example of why it pays to read and be informed.
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Number 2 isn't bad. :) You've got it exactly, Pete.
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