Dance around

dancing lemur.
Originally uploaded by gr0uch0

I read in a review of his new book that Richard Dawkins has a great appreciation for the dancing sifaka lemur.

His new book is THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH: The Evidence for Evolution. It looks like a great read.

An alarmingly large percentage of people in America don't believe in evolution, which puzzles me to no end. It must be something in the water, or maybe some subliminal messages broadcast on TV. I have no explanation for this.

I'm happy I evolved with a good set of feet and an appreciation of science.

Nearing the end of barehand running season

Walking on my hands 2
Originally uploaded by トリプ · tripu

I've noticed that last couple weeks that my hands are getting pretty cold while I'm running. I think when the temp finally dips below 40 for a run, I'll dig out some gloves. So much for my hands being bare.....

I don't know why, but I feel like it's about time to test my speed. I've done very little speed work in the last several months, but I'm hoping that my steady diet of moderate and slow running will pay off with more natural speed when it comes time to race again.

Right now, it feels like beating last year's 5K PR is going to be a challenge.

Bye the way, last Sunday's split run experiment was very interesting. In the pre-dawn run, my feet were quite sensitive, and I ended up cutting the run short and didn't feel too optimistic about my run for the later morning. However, when I went out later in the morning, I brought my iPod, and the temp had warmed up about 20 degrees. My feet felt much better, and the only thing slowing me down towards the end of the run was some chafing. I had forgotten to use bodyglide.

The big business of running?!?

I'm all for writing books, doing clinics, coaching, etc. But what exactly is the running business or the running industry?

Come on, running is the simplest of activities (or complicated, sometimes), and it takes no real investment of money to do.

So I was surprised when I read the following article. Dean Karnazes uses the terms running business and running industry more times that I can count. I don't know what he is talking about.

http://dean.runnersworld.com/2009/11/state-of-running.html

A new book on Barefoot Running

Jason Robillard has just come out with a new book on barefoot running. Believe it or not, it's longer than The Complete Book of Barefoot Running. People who aren't big fans of brevity will want to check out his book.

I've had the opportunity to read an earlier draft version of this book, and I can say without a doubt that the advice given within it is very solid and potentially very valuable for anyone beginning the transition to barefoot running. Jason is an experience barefoot runner, with a great way of presenting the topic. And he has put in the miles to hone and perfect his craft.

Check it out here:

The Barefoot Running Guide: A compilation of the adventures of barefoot ultrarunner Jason Robillard

It's currently in ebook form, but a printed version should be available in early December.

I'm sure this will be the first of many books to come out on barefoot running. Hopefully, they all will help add to the discussion.

Such a short book

teeny tiny book i bound
Originally uploaded by robayre

Why is The Complete Book of Barefoot Running so short? Good question.

There are a number of reasons. I'm not what you would call a good writer, so that's a big part of it. However, I don't think that is the main reason.

I think the conciseness of The Complete Book of Barefoot Running is a statement of what I really think and feel about running barefoot. It's not something you read about or think about. It's something you do. Humans evolved to run, and to run barefoot. We didn't evolved to run in overly cushioned shoes.

I think the key to really learning to run barefoot is to let one's body take over the activity and get the brain out of the way.

So The Complete Book of Barefoot Running might not be the biggest or best written book on the subject, but I think it is the best and most complete.

Thanks for listening.

Becoming Human

I happened to catch a big chunk of this evening's Nova. The episode was part 2 of a 3 part series on our evolution. Part of this episode included Daniel Lieberman talking about our our ancestors and persistence hunting.

You can watch the episode online.

Becoming Human Part 2

Very cool stuff.

Quotes for the day

"The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil to learn is hammering on cold iron."
-- Horace Mann


"We don't print the truth. We print what we know, what people tell us. So we print lies."
-- Said by Benjamin Bradlee while he was executive editor of the Washington Post

split them up

I'm thinking of trying something a little different tomorrow morning. I'm going to try an early morning run, and a mid morning run. That way, I can get in an hour run while everyone is still sleeping, then another hour in before lunch. I want to see how that goes in terms of the timing and also how my feet respond.

My juggling feels smooth today.

next sport.....

What's up next? Looks like the college football season is done. At least I can do something else.

little steps

I'm going to see if I can interest the little guy in a run this morning or afternoon. It's been awhile since we've gone running. He loves it when we go. But for some strange reason, he chooses to wear shoes.

In the last 2 days, I've made small strides in my attempts to perfect my joggling form. I'm not sure why, but I suspect that it has something to do with trying a couple different things in terms of practice.

A slow kind of fast

Slow (but also fast)
Originally uploaded by Lady Vervaine

I ran about 2 miles last night. I had one juggling ball with me and was experimenting with different kinds of tosses while I was running. I'm not sure you can really call it a juggling ball, though when it's isolated by itself. Then it just becomes a ball, or more precisely a bean bag.

I'm not sure this is the official term, but I was practicing a vamp toss, and found that I could do this in rhythm to my foot cadence very well. This is in contrast to my joggling, where my juggling and feet are all out of sync.

Towards the end of the run, I felt quite fast and fluid. I was pretty sure that I was going to look at my watch at the end of the run and see that I was quicker than the last time I ran this route. Instead, I was a minute slower. It's funny how sometimes the perception of speed is so wrong. It's possible that I really was faster by the end of the run, but I must have been going pretty slow earlier in the run.

My right foot is quite bruised right now, but it's one of those things I don't feel when I'm running. I think I got some rocks pretty good with it earlier in the week, and it will be fine in time.

Later.

Making things behind the scenes

This has nothing to do with running, but I found this article to be interesting. (Thanks, Paul) It describes some Japanese companies that make highly advanced products that most people never see.

Invisible but indispensable

Gridded

Garmin Forerunner 205 GPS Running Watch
Originally uploaded by LovingOutdoors.co.uk

I'm glad I did the month (actually a little more than a month) running off the grid. It was good for a few reasons. I became less attached to my yearly mileage totals. There's nothing like chopping a month off the totals to get the ego out of that. And with not having pre-set routes, I felt a new kind of freedom with running. Sometimes I would be running and turn in an unexpected direction, just because it looked good at that very moment.

The downside was that I ended up running less frequently than I had been, at least that is my perception. When I don't write things down, my memory gets a little fuzzy.

In any case, it was like taking a month off running, but with the added bonus of still running.

Now that I'm tracking my runs again, I feel a renewed sense of purpose about where my running is going. It helps that I have a race coming up later this month. Even though I don't feel fast right now, I suspect that I can run a very fast race.