An Interview with the New Balance Minimus' Brand Manager

They are going in the right direction...

Vibram's Plans for World Domination

The picture is becoming clear. 

You've got to remember: Vibram is in the business of selling soles to shoe manufacturers.  Vibram FiveFingers were a little sideline for them, an experiment, that took off beyond their wildest dreams.


Apparently Wolverine (the company that makes Merrell boots and shoes) is one of their bigger customers. The new Merrell Barefoot line of shoes is being comarketed with Vibrams.

My local outdoor store said Vibram and Merrell are coming together next week to show the new lines: FiveFingers and Barefoot, side by side. A complete solution.

You want toes? Vibram Fivefingers. You want barefoot-style shoes without toes? Merrell Barefoot, with a Vibram sole.

NB Minimus

And now, the last piece of the plan: You want something a little more traditional? New Balance Minimus, with a Vibram sole, and Tony Krupicka's smiling face.

Vibram offered the five finger concept as a sole to all of their existing customers (the shoe manufacturers) and they all turned it down. That freed up Vibram to create it. They won't compete against their shoe manufacturer customers, however, so all the "shoe" versions of Vibram's concept are going to come from traditional shoe makers.

Vibram clearly can't meet the manufacturing requirement for these kinds of shoes.  They're trying hard, but you can only ramp up so fast. Wolverine and New Balance already have the capacity, on the other hand. It's pretty brilliant, I think. A nice win-win situation.
 
What will be interesting to see is how Vibram will respond to this.  It's pretty clearly a patent violation, IMHO.

UPDATE: Follow-ups here and here.

Runblogger Hits The Big Time

An Evolutionary Runner

Ibuprofen and Running

Wow, pretty fascinating article.  I don't use ibuprofen, and certainly not when exercising.  After reading this, I will continue that policy.

Low-fat diet with lots of fruits, veggies, and grains

CONCLUSIONS: Over a mean of 8.1 years, a dietary intervention that reduced total fat intake and increased intakes of vegetables, fruits, and grains did not significantly reduce the risk of [Coronary Heart Disease], stroke, or [Cardio-Vascular Disease] in postmenopausal women and achieved only modest effects on CVD risk factors, suggesting that more focused diet and lifestyle interventions may be needed to improve risk factors and reduce CVD risk.

"More focused"?  What does that mean?  Shouldn't they recognize that this approach simply does not work? 

Trying the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome is a definition of insanity...

It Can Be Dramatic...

From BFT's group today:

You influential bastards! I was very happy on my 75% wheat-based carb diet (well, I was happy about 75% of the time). After a combination of lurking through all the paleo discussions here, reading the links Tuck et. al. have posted, and a recommendation by my Crossfit trainer, i decided to give up wheat and refined sugar-based foods. I really didn't notice a difference... until I ate some cake a week ago. The behavioral change was striking. Within 30 minutes, I felt depressed and extraordinarily irritable. Being the skeptic I am, I wrote it off as a fluke. Then I ate some chocolate chip-laden trail mix without realizing it contained the chocolate. Same deal... depression and irritability within about 30 minutes.

Those two data points have convinced me to experiment further. I'll be spending the next few months systematically testing a variety of foods. The real question... how will my new diet affect distance running?

UPDATE: Jason posted more about it here.

New Blog I'll Be Following...

Health Correlator.  He did some interesting analysis of the China study data after Denise Minger pointed out to everyone that it was publicly available.

He's got a very interesting post on how he lost 60 lbs.  If you're doing it right, and you're patient, it's not hard.