vibram

The Vibram thing.

| cheriarmour

There’s a saying in Haiti, and it translates loosely to this. “You eat the meat, and spit out the bones.”

What it means?

Take what you want or need from every situation, and “spit out” what you don’t need. This logic should have applied in the case of Vibrams. Vibram, which is under the umbrella of New Balance (fun fact!) advertised these zero-drop minimalist shoe, and claimed, among other things, that the shoes would alleviate knee pain, blah blah blah.  I need you guys to understand that any shoe that across-the-board, promises to alleviate knee pain, is probably bs because of the sheer fact that shoes are subjective.  Everyone cannot wear every shoe.  Because every body is different.

I digress however.

vibram.jpg

I started running in Vibrams like 3 years ago.

It was fine, until my achilles tendon on my right side started bothering me.  So I stuck to the shoes mainly for things like weightlifting, and left the long runs to shoes with more cushion.  I love cushioning, and minimalist running just wasn’t for me.  Didn’t mean it sucked.  But certainly didn’t mean it ruled either.

So back to my original point, Vibram just lost a class action lawsuit for making claims such as the one I mentioned above, with the knee thing.  Folks were getting the shoes on, running like 8 miles in them their first day, and experiencing some serious issues.  Which is obviously Vibram’s fault.  <-that was sarcasm.

So yes, perhaps claiming that Vibrams would magically cure the common cold was a stretch, but where does consumer common sense rule in making decisions about running shoes?

I cannot tell you how many time folks would walk into the store, state they had just had surgery to fix a ruptured achilles tendon, and then ask to see all minimal shoes, despite our suggestions toward something with a little more structure.

Here’s the lesson you should take from this Vibrams thing.

USE YOUR BRAIN WHEN SHOPPING FOR SHOES.  If you’ve been injured before, it’s really not the time to try some crazy shoe with zero support.  If something hurts, stop it and consider a different shoe.  And for the love of God, investigate all wacky claims for yourself.

Have a ever run “barefoot”?  What did you think?

-I did for a short time, like I said, before my achilles started bothering me, so I stopped.  After that, I ran in the Saucony Kinvara for a while, which seemed to agree with me a little bit more.  Austin actually lifts daily in his Vibrams, but he is relatively injury-free and has no problem with it, but he saves his long runs for a more traditional running shoes.

 

Stress Dreams.

| cheriarmour

I’m no stranger to the stress dream.

When I was in high school, I used to repeatedly dream that I was being attacked by dogs, and that my report card was straight Fs.

Once, in college I dreamt that my transcript was full of Fs and that I had run a bunch of red lights, which led me to wake up in a sweaty panic because my parents would take my car away had I ran all those red lights and gotten those tickets.

As of late, I still dream that all my teeth fall out, that I show up late to teach a class, and that I start my iPod and instead of Latin music, calming yoga music pipes through the speakers.

But the worst of all these stress dreams is the running stress dreams. The dreams where I show up late to a race, panicking about whether I can catch up to the sweeper.  The dreams where I realize my marathon is only a month away and I haven’t started training.  Those kinds.

But the worst of all the stress dreams came after I got off the plane from Atlanta, and laid down for what was supposed to be an hour-long nap.  I was asleep instead for nearly 3 hours, and apparently worked through the entire REM cycle because the dream I had seemed to last forever, and it was completely, completely bananas.

In the dream:  I was running my usual, but by myself this time on Monday evening in a pair of Vibram 5-Fingers.  Pictured here for reference.
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The terrain was more naturey than it usually is, and I was running through rivers and woods and over logs and all of that.  I was running, in the Vibrams and jumping tree branches and logs and all that.  All of a sudden, as I was running through the river, a fork that had been littered into the water goes into my toe, and punctures it deeply.  So for the remainder of the run, I’m crawling as my toe bleeds all over the place and I try to get folks to help me call 911. I woke up from that terrifying nap with a horrible pain in my toe, like I’d fallen asleep weird and somehow managed to cut circulation off to it – but no blood.  Yikes!

Do you ever have stress dreams?  Describe some of them!