Born to Run Barefoot?

Sorting Through the Myths and Facts of Barefoot Running

By: Chas Gillespie

Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith

Length: 1 hr and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Two million years ago, Africa: A skinny, long-limbed creature who walks on two legs, can’t sprint, and has no weapons turns away from his under-nourished friends, and runs down a much stronger antelope. Dinner. Over succeeding generations, this creature evolves into one of the best distance runners on the planet: the human being. Yet in the age of modernity, we find ourselves unable to run without more than half of us suffering injury. This book looks at the injury epidemic in running and what the barefoot running movement believes are the causes of injury. It analyzes the best-seller Born to Run, how human evolution has shaped our bodies, how modernity has warped those same bodies, and what barefoot running both got right and wrong. It concludes by giving practical advice to runners from the writer, a 2012 Olympic Trials qualifier in the marathon.

©2013 Chas Gillespie (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Great Easy Listening

Gillespie takes what could otherwise be a fairly boring topic and brings a concise fresh take which makes for a great read.
This is not the antithesis of Born to Run, rather a question Gillespie is trying to answer and I believe he does, in a satisfying way for the reader. In a time of all style no substance headlines, this is not a hot takes which solve all your problems in 200 pages or less.
I hope to see more writing from this talented author in the near future.

Fan of Born to run?

Then you should listen to this excellent breakdown of one of the most influential running themed books - Born To Run by Christopher McDougall.

Born to run analysis

Basically an analysis of the book born to run. Different point of view and a good viewpoint but don't expect a similar story.

This just saved me

A coupleyears ago a tried to switch to for foot strike. Within months a had a compact injury in my foot, gave up running. going back now I was considering barefoot running after reading Born To Run. Luckily I didn't and listened to this instead... Now I understand why I got injured and how to prevent it again. Thanks you so much. I'm one of those who just love to run, without a target, I just had forgotten it... Until now.

An interesting book

A nice book that was pretty motivational and I found it to be well written. I recommend this book.

Very Informative

The essay of what to and not to do for barefoot running was very interesting. There is a lot of debunking the information from Born to Run gives in regards to running. This isn't a why barefoot running is good or bad but more about things to know when running in general. Barefoot runners can learn from this essay just as much as non-barefoot runners. I highly recommend listening or reading this essay right after Born to Run.

I'm a big fan of science...and this book

I really love the book born too run but things just seemed a bit too magic bullet but I could never quite put my finger on it till this book. They go into decent depth of things but also have more science to back it up than, "well, it worked for me" kind of things.

More of a critical opinion on "Born to Run"

The author seems to be out to get Chris McDougall for "Born to Run". Essentially this is a critical review of minimalist/barefoot running idea presented in "Born to Run", not a comprehensive review of barefoot running in general. It was interesting perspective at times, however the author took it upon himself to say that McDougall encouraged barefoot running, when in fact only one person in "Born to Run" was running barefoot and was often told to put shoes on. Barefoot running was only presented as a thing that "Barefoot Ted" did and some runners do and why they do it. McDougall himself ran in normal running shoes, and so did majority of the runners so this entire thing focusing on McDougall endorsing barefoot running was just unnecessary.

Last critique is that at the end the author gives very conventional advise to running "Take it easy, stretch, buy good shoes, have a coach". So, it seems the conclusion is - don't run barefoot, do what everyone else does.

I still recommend reading it, as I definitely took away several good points the author mentions in the middle of the book, like barefoot running may be natural but if you haven't done it your entire life, your body will suffer if you jump into it head first. The key is taking it easy and training and stretching your feet, legs, muscles to run barefoot very gradually, which should have been the conclusion here.

A Good Perspective of Barefoot Running.

The book takes a look at both sides of the argument of barefoot running.

Good to be more critic about barefoot runnngi

From my experience of being a sedentary guy who started long distance running
then triathlon,
then training run barefoot with vibrams
finally going to full distance ironman

I experienced the difficulty of barefoot running transition. I missed the part of working on weaknes muscles and mobility and that made the way harder.

This book allow us on being more critic on information available on internet related to barefoot running. Including the romantic acceptance of "born to run" as being the goal to achieve for all runners