This review is on both the book and his author's website runblogger.com as both resources are helping me to run injury free. I stumbled upon his website as my fear for every runner came a reality; my current shoes, Asics Piranha, have been discontinued. I needed to find my next favorite shoes, and I tried on bunch of different pairs and nothing seem to fit right. Like many runners, I would read up on shoes reviews, and Peter's website kept popping up. I initially didn't take his reviews seriously as I thought he was just a runner wanting to score free shoes by writing reviews. But after reading many of his reviews, he was very clear about discussing the negatives of each pair and started to read his website more carefully.
Back to my shoes being discontinued, the shoes I was wearing was still causing me some pain so it wasn't even the best shoes for the way I run. It was the best that I could find at the time. Just like many runners, I did too much too soon about 10 years ago when I ran a marathon too soon. This gave me a really bad knee pain that forced me to take up cycling for a very long time. I like cycling, but it just is not as convenient with longer training and too dependent on weather or difficult to ride in the dark. I wanted to get back into running, and I was "prescribed" as having some overpronation, so I've been running with Nike Triax and heel striking. I think running too much too soon caused my knee pain, but I think in the long run, I would've developed the same knee pain if I would've kept running the same way even if I ramped mileage up slowly.
Eventually, I figured out that my knee doesn't hurt when I sprint, and when I sprint, I'm a forefoot striker like most people. I started running long distance forefoot striking, but this time, my calves would feel extremely tight, so I had to stop running again.
Then, I read Born to Run like many people have, and learned about barefoot and minimalist running. From this, I've learned that my calves felt tight forefoot striking because of large heel to toe drop with the running shoes I was running. So, I started to just focus on the drop and started running with either zero drop or little drop shoes. Then, I developed pain on my second metatarsal pain, and I've decided running is jut not for me. All of the very minimal running shoes gave me pain like Fivefingers, huaraches, and I've found Piranha's to be tolerable for short distance running. So, I've started to just stick with very low mileage running to keep my heart healthy.
So, back to the present of reading this book, this book goes deep and gives insight of basically all running related researches and all important books written about running. It really gives you a great knowledge about how we evolved, shoe companies' evolution, studies on foot strike, running gait, barefoot running, pronation and nutrition. This book had pretty convincing argument about categorizing you into certain type of pronation to determine your shoes is not the right approach. This book doesn't say certain form is the best, but gives you knowledge about all of the researches and studies so you can decide what works for you and what doesn't work. From learning more about running through this book and his website, I've learned that my issue may be from shoes that are not flexible in the toe area as toes need to be flexible especially if you're forefoot striking. As this seems to be the case as I've been running with Skechers Gorun's and they seem to feel pretty good, and I also emphasize on keeping my toes down as much as possible, so I don't push off too much. I want to see if more flexible shoes are better so I'm going to try Gobionic and Nike Free 3.0 as well to see if those are better for my feet. Also, I've been very conscious of not going too much too soon, by only adding 1 minute of running per week to my daily runs. And only adding one more minute, if my runs have been pain free.
I wanted to give you a good background about me because this book and his website helped me start analyzing about myself better to run injury free. This book won't tell you to run in a specific way, or needing to by certain shoes to run, but gives you knowledge to start pointing you to the right way.
Some additional information that I would've like from the book:
Sockless running: I believe Peter runs sockless, and I run sockless as well as I feel that it's easier for me to run with better form, and I tend to land more lightly sockless. I wish this book talked about sockless running, but there may be no studies regarding sockless. Whenever I search on sockless running, all I find is about triathletes trying to save seconds during their transitions. There's not much other information out there.
Talking about dairy in the diet section: Effect of dairy was mentioned briefly in the diet section, but I think more should be written about. A lot was written about grain causing trouble, but majority of non-whites have some type of issues with dairy, so I think this should have been noted more clearly. As from my research, most people are usually okay eating most grains as long as it's processed well so it doesn't wreak havoc with your digestive system. However, many people continue to eat lots of dairy and that could be causing lot of issues which I don't think it gets discussed as much in the "back to nature" diets compared to how much grain is discussed. This is probably because most of people into the "back to nature" diets are upper/middle class white people which dairy causes the least problem. Also, running in America is probably most popular with upper/middle class white people as well, so I guess that's the majority of the audience with this book as well.
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Join or create book clubs
Choose books together
Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Follow the authors
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together
$14.12
Get it Mar 25 - 29
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Choose items to buy together.
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Top reviews from other countries
J Williams
Does what it says on the cover
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 10, 2013
Stephan Wiesner
WARUM Vorfusslaufen und kurze Schritte gut sind - vielleicht
Reviewed in Germany on May 26, 2013
