Check out Newton Running's "State of the Natural Running Movement" Panel Discussion

Newton Running invites you.

People who have been running for awhile and paying some attention to the sport are probably aware of the barefoot running movement. In a nutshell, barefoot runners believe that shoes mess with how our bodies evolved to run and cause injuries. The barefoot runner's manifesto, or at least its most successful foray into mainstream society, is Christopher McDougall's New York Times bestseller Born to Run (read my book review here).

Barefoot runners have always been a small minority of the running population, mostly because nobody wants to run without their shoes! And for good reason! It's kind of painful, it takes a long adjustment period, and everyone is terrified of broken glass, hypodermic needles, dog poop, and all the many gross things inhabiting our roads, running paths, and public parks.

So it turns out you can have your cake and eat it, too. Newton Running is leading the "natural running" movement, which seeks to teach people to run the barefoot way while keeping their feet firmly shod. The trick here is not to wear high heels. Take a look at your running shoes or, as Newton has done, saw them in half. Your shoe's heels are much higher than your shoe's toes. This angle forces your heel to strike the ground before your toes, which runs counter to many thousands of years of evolved human running form.

You see, humans have been running for tens of thousands of years. Some evolutionary biologists actually believe that the ability to run is the primary evolutionary advantage that spurred man to become homo sapiens, i.e. a big-brained tool user. Being hairless and sweaty, we're able to run far, far longer than any other animal on earth. (In fact, there is an annual organized race between horses and humans. Apparently, these particular humans and horses defy this particular hypothesis.) Humans can cool our bodies more effectively and avoid overheating. Other animals overheat quickly. There are those biologists who believe that ancient man simply ran down his prey, continually chasing until animals keeled over, half-cooked and nearly dead (a technique known as persistence hunting and covered in a story on This American Life and this BBC video). The ability to run long meant a boost to our meat supply, which supposedly allowed our brains to grow bigger and bigger.

Anyway... we've been running a very long time, but shoes weren't invited until just a few thousand years ago. (Man, that must have been a huge "Duh!" moment!). Those used to be simple moccasin-style foot coverings with little padding. Early 20th century running shoes were mostly canvas with laces. Since Nike's founding in in mid-20th century, running shoe companies have been adding more and more padding to shoes, raising the heel 10-12% above the toe, or even higher. Now when modern humans take off our high-heeled running shoes and go for a run, we start out banging our heels against the ground, because that's what we're used to. Soon, the brain is like, "Dang! Ouch! Watch it, bro!" and begins changing our foot strike so that the middle or the front of the foot hits the ground before the heel.

Newton Running's shoes feature a 0-3% grade from heel to toe. To me, this seems to be the company's biggest contribution to running shoes, and the major shoe manufacturers are all expected to announce similarly flat running shoes at the 2010 Running Event in Texas (I'll be there!).

So Newton is dedicated to teaching people how to run with barefoot form while they keep their shoes on (preferably Newtons, of course). Newton's panel next week will explore the state of this natural running movement. This fall, we're releasing a book by Newton's co-founder Danny Abshire that is all about natural running, so you'll find me among the audience of this panel event.

A quick note: I bought this pair of Newtons, partly out of curiosity, partly to help me understand the book, and partly because I want to get faster. My quick review is that they definitely help me heel strike less, though I found that no shoe is likely to fix technique alone. I'm excited to read our book so I can overhaul my running technique... again.