Sole and Inspiration

Marathon runners with poor footwear suffer the agony of defeat.

Defeat – de-feet, get it? 

Ooh, tough crowd.

Anyway, pathetic joke aside, there’s a serious point to be made. When going for a run, particularly a long run, your feet are hitting the ground hundreds, if not thousands of times. Running such a long distance puts a great deal of stress on the entire body, but it is your lower body, especially your feet that feel the full force of your body weight. The average runner will experience three to four times their body weight in stress load on the lower body while running. Thus, the importance of wearing appropriate footwear cannot be overemphasised.

I’ll try to explain in straightforward terms that anybody can understand, for the simple reason that even I don’t quite understand it myself. There is this movement of the foot called pronation. This is defined as “the inward roll of the foot and in particular the heel and arch which occurs naturally at the heel strike as a cushioning mechanism.” In the Queen’s English, this basically means that this is the normal movement and positioning of the foot as it hits the ground. With normal pronation, the foot rolls about 15 degrees inward as it comes in contact with the ground. This distributes the forces of impact, supporting the body weight, somewhat like a shock absorber.

However, overpronation is where the foot rolls more than 15 degrees inward as it hits the ground. The shock isn’t absorbed as well and the foot and ankle can’t stabilise the body properly. This is common in runners with low arches or flat feet, and puts a strain on the big toe and second toe as well as the heel.

Underpronation (or supination) is where the foot rolls less than 15 degrees inward as it hits the ground. It is typical in runners with high arches and this puts a strain on the smaller toes and on the legs.

The level of pronation can be controlled by wearing the right shoes that support the feet properly and have the appropriate amount of cushioning, so as I said, footwear is essential to prevent injury (or if not prevent it altogether, then minimise it certainly).

Having begun my training using a bog-standard pair of trainers, I decided to invest in more suitable footwear. In late August I went to a specialist running shop in Chadwell Heath, RM6, and purchased a nice pair of Mizuno trainers for the princely sum of £95.

 

Now, I’m no Imelda Marcos and I don’t have a large shoe collection and I certainly don’t believe in paying over the odds for footwear. Who wants to pay a fortune for a few strips of leather and plastic cobbled together (literally)? In this case I was prepared to make an exception, because if I was going to train for this marathon, I was going to do it properly. No half-measures. No cutting corners. Professional runners tend to frown on popular brands like Nike and Reebok and their ilk when it comes to running shoes, as they’re seen as more of a fashion statement rather than a serious choice of footwear. I’m not quite as snobbish myself, but I see their point. Buying a cheap pair of trainers that merely look ‘cool’ is all very well and good, but they won’t last very long and you run the risk of injuring yourself. You want running shoes that are durable and won’t leave you requiring an amputation.

I speak from bitter experience because I injured my feet in late September and it was sheer agony. First the right foot, only for my left foot to get injured once the right one had recovered. It was entirely self-inflicted because I overtrained. It was made worse by continuing to run through the pain (albeit doing shorter distances), rather than resting my feet, but for some inexplicable reason, it seemed preferable to keep on running and hope that it would automatically sort my feet out, rather than undoing all my hard work by missing several weeks of training. I never really had much common sense, as most people who know me will attest.

I paid the price for this and I’ve learned my lesson, so now I run no more than three times a week. A short run twice during the weekdays, and a nice long one during the weekend when I have more free time.

Fortunately, since then, I have avoided injury, but I am still irrationally paranoid about getting myself injured, especially as the marathon draws ever-closer. I’m more injury-prone than Ledley King and Frank Spencer put together, and that’s saying something.