Barefoot Running | Fitness | The Dallas Morning News

INSIDE ELSEWHERE: Corporations want culture — and the AT&T Performing Arts Center delivers 1D DVDs: ‘Transformers’ on Blu-ray is awesome, dude 3E HEALTH ALERTS: Are your vaccinations up to date? 10E

The Dallas Morning News

Arts, Entertainment & Life

Section E

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

HEALTHY LIVING

CONCERT REVIEW

Good for the long run? Runners kick off their shoes to try barefooting By CHRISTY ROBINSON

AT&T fireworks, restless audience mar performance

Special Contributor

I

t felt strange leaving behind my cushy Asics as I headed out the door for a run at White Rock Lake. Even stranger was heading out for a run with no shoes at all. If you spend time at the Katy Trail or any other fitness hot spot, chances are you’ve seen someone padding along barefoot or in funny shoes resembling foot-gloves. Athletic adherents across the globe are increasingly running barefoot or minimally shod in races from 5 kilometers to 100 miles. Why would runners forgo standard running shoes, engineered over three decades to stabilize, cushion and comfort?

I sought answers from barefooters and tried it myself. Hamlin Jones offers reassurance to local runners interested in the trend. Last year, the marathon coach at Luke’s Locker in Plano began running barefoot. Two months ago, he started wearing Vibram FiveFingers — shoes that look like fingered socks and offer some protection. He once was hoofing it down a highway when his bare feet caught some attention. “A kid said, ‘Hey, you’re not wearing shoes!’ I said, ‘Hey, you are!’ I wanted to show that if I can go out there and do these things, why can’t other people?” He says he’s drawn to barefoot running because it’s a challenge — something I could relate to. But I had concerns about my first official barefoot run. Would people look at me like I’m crazy? Would I step on something sharp? Or in something disgusting? I sucked it up and began a slow gait on a paved trail at the lake’s Winfrey Point. My bare soles sounded like a cat’s tongue licking a rough surface, and I was surprised at how comfortable my form felt. Perhaps because of some primal body memory, I naturally struck the pavement forefoot-first instead of heel-first. This definitely felt different. Ted McDonald of Seattle feels the difference, too. He was approaching

By SCOTT CANTRELL Classical Music Critic [email protected]

Cape Cod, Mass., wouldn’t immediately come to mind as a hotbed of high-level choral singing. But the choir known as Gloriae Dei Cantores (Singers to the Glory of God), which is based at the Church of the Transfiguration in Orleans, has toured internationally and recorded two dozen CDs.

Plan your life Repeats 7:30 tonight at St. Stephen Presbyterian Church, 2700 McPherson, Fort Worth. Donation. 817-927-8411. www.gdcchoir.org.

STEWART F. HOUSE/Special Contributor

What’s missing from this picture? Hint: Check out the feet. Hamlin Jones, 38, runs barefoot with his daughter Heather, 9, at Warren Sports Complex in Frisco. Jones says running barefoot can be an attention-getter.

40 several years ago, and he’d always wanted to run a marathon. But not even the best shoes allowed him to run for more than an hour without pain. He had already been hiking barefoot and decided to try it on a run. He had an epiphany. “All the things I thought were necessary were exactly counter to what I did need, which was just to learn how to run correctly,” says McDonald, who’s widely known as “Barefoot Ted” among runners. “With the shoe, so much of running is about cutting off or

disassociating from what you’re doing.” Barefoot running, he says, “forces you to be mindful and very present.” In February, Josh Stevenson, a Christchurch, New Zealand, multisport and adventure racer, was the first ever to finish the 243-kilometer Speight’s Coast to Coast race of kayaking, cycling and road and mountain runs completely barefoot. It took five days for his swollen feet and ankles to recover, and he swore

he’d never do something that crazy again. Stevenson went back to running in shoes — and hated it. “I believe that in the next five years, there will be a shift in shoe design to shoes like Vibram FiveFingers and that the current shoe designs are old-school,” he says. “By running barefoot, I have strengthened the supporting muscles in my feet and ankles and my running has improved out of sight.” See IS Page 10E

CONCERT REVIEW

Miley sets stage for post-Hannah career Teen star’s performance aimed at expanding audience By MARIO TARRADELL Music Critic [email protected]

Hannah Montana might as well be history. The successful Disney Channel series has one more season to go, but Miley Cyrus has already moved on. Her concert performance before a sold-out crowd Sunday night at American Airlines Center was a showcase for Miley Cyrus the singer, actress and _

The glory of song at Guadalupe Cathedral

entertainer, not the TV star. She clearly has much bigger endeavors in mind. It’s telling that the bulk of the material making up her 80-minute set came from 2007’s Meet Miley Cyrus, 2008’s Breakout and the new EP, The Time of Our Lives. It’s also notable that she showed the audience the trailer for The Last Song, her 2010 coming-of-age film, and then sang a piano ballad from the movie.

Cyrus, 16, is in that awkward teenager-to-adult phase. She’s trying to figure out how to hold on to those tween and teen fans, who showed up in mass quantities at the show, while attempting to grow up artistically and personally. Nothing she did on that platform should stir up controversy, but she’s not a kid anymore. See MILEY Page 3E

JOHN F. RHODES/Staff Photographer

Nothing she did at American Airlines Center should stir up controversy, but Miley Cyrus is clearly growing up.

As part of a 10-city U.S. tour, the group performed Sunday evening at the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. There was much to admire in a program of Russian music, three motets by the Englishman Edmund Rubbra and the glorious Mass for Double Choir by the Swiss composer Frank Martin. Led with strikingly minimal gestures by Elizabeth Patterson, the 36-voice group sang with firm tone, a wide dynamic range, lovely legato lines and generous expressivity. The cathedral provided a richly reverberant acoustic, the closest in the area to the great European cathedrals for which so much major choral music was conceived. The chorus was at its considerable best in the Martin, one of the greatest 20th-century settings of the Latin Mass. Voice parts lapped gently at the beginnings of the Gloria and Sanctus, but climaxes stirred up thrilling masses of sound. In a spectacularly unfortunate mistiming, though, the adjacent AT&T Performing Arts Center set off loud fireworks during the Benedictus and Agnus Dei. Groan. This was a concert with its share of bad luck. Parents with babies and young children who couldn’t keep quiet wandered in and out from the all-day Arts District celebration. The minute organist James Jordan started to play the Bach C-major Toccata, half the audience stood up and started talking. After two warmly molded movements from Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the choir’s intonation drifted in two movements from Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil. And neither the six-movement Ineffable Mystery by Russian composer Georgy Sviridov nor three Tenebrae motets by Rubbra struck me as music of great interest. The Rubbra’s odd progressions also needed more absolutely precise tuning.

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10E

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

GuideLive.com

HEALTHY LIVING

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The Dallas Morning News

Is barefooting a good move for you? Jones occasionally wears lightweight FiveFingers shoes by Vibram.

Continued from Page 1E

Medical views Some studies show benefits to barefoot running, but none compares them to the benefits of wearing shoes, says Dr. Michael D. VanPelt, podiatrist and professor of foot and ankle surgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center. “I don’t think there’s a downside to it, other than it should be left for experienced runners, not for novice runners,” he says. Austin ultra runner Josue´ Stephens spent time as a young child with the Tarahumara Indians of Northern Mexico, who are known for their long-distance running prowess. They run barefoot or in homemade huarache sandals, which provide some protection from the elements but little support or cushion. Stephens says that “the entire running scene” has been exposed to the tribe because of the book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, by Christopher McDougall (Knopf, $24.95). Emulating them, he has run 10Ks barefoot and 50K races in a pair of FiveFingers. But VanPelt advises starting off gradually on a track, treadmill or dirt path to minimize the chance of punctures, blisters or other injuries. “Some people compare barefoot tribes to us, but in America we’re a little more high-maintenance. They

ARE YOU READY FOR BAREFOOT RUNNING? grow up barefoot, so they’re used to that.” McDonald believes that everyone has inherited the capacity to run barefoot. “It’s partly because of marketing and the money being made that has caused us to think we were born broken. In reality, the foot is a miraculous, powerful tool we’ve been given,” he said. “We like to buy our solutions, and so much of running-shoe technology has been feeding on that desire.”

What’s it like? I tested my own bare feet on a sampling of surfaces. I ran up and down a hill with a dirt trail, surprised at how easy it was to avoid stepping on

rocks. An untended, gravelly side street was completely undoable, and the top layer of silt on a softball field’s red dirt felt like running on up-ended thumbtacks. No thanks. I finally found my barefoot thrill in a field of wild, knee-high grass. If there were any hazards to avoid, I couldn’t see them. What could I do? I threw caution to the wind and ran as fast as I could. I thought of childhood. “I remember feeling so free as a child, running around completely barefoot in the woods, in the streets, playing soccer, climbing trees. I feel very similar when I run barefoot,” Stephens says. “You won’t know that feeling until you try it.” Christy Robinson is a freelance writer in Dallas. She blogs at runnerish.blogspot.com.

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Josh Stevenson, adventure racer: “First, I have to point out that I planned and prepared for eight months before race day came around. Don’t rush into it.” ❧ Seek medical advice on any physical issues you have. ❧ Take short walks first. ❧ Add distance over time, then build up to running. Josué Stephens, ultra runner: “The first time I ran barefoot, I got too excited and ran 15 miles on pavement. I bruised my forefoot so bad I didn’t run for two weeks.” ❧ Run on a soft surface at first, like a golf course, no more than one to two miles. ❧ Avoid running fast and landing on your heels. ❧ Focus on your form and on feeling the ground underneath you. “Barefoot Ted” McDonald, ultra runner and coach: “The biggest beginner mistake: exuberance. This is orchard-growing, not fast food.” ❧ Start gradually on hard surfaces such as pavement so you learn to feel the ground before taking on rougher, uneven surfaces.

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LOST IN THOUGHT: Living Well Dallas Health & Wellness

Center, 4801 Frankford Road, will hold a seminar on the power of thought to make positive life changes. The session will be held twice on Thursday, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and again from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Cost is $25. Seating is limited. Call 972-930-0260 for information. GIRLS AND GUYS IN MOTION: Girls and boys ages 7 to 14 are invited to take part in the third annual Trick or Treat Triathlon on Saturday benefiting Girls in Motion, a Dallas-based nonprofit organization

formed to prevent obesity and eating disorders through mentorship, education and fitness. The swimming, biking and running event, from 8 to 10 a.m., will be held at Greenhill School, 4141 Spring Valley Road, Addison. To register, call 214-709-5159 or visit www.girlsinmotion.org for fees and information. Helen Bond E-mail information to [email protected] at least nine days before publication.

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Dr. Michael D. VanPelt of UT Southwestern Medical Center suggests that only runners with an established routine take shoeless runs. Even competitive athletes start off gradually. Here’s their advice for beginners.

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Photos by STEWART F. HOUSE/Special Contributor

Hamlin Jones, 38, of Frisco says he is drawn to the challenge of barefoot running.

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EXERCISE

Updated vaccinations urged

Fit or not, you’ll feel better

Experts estimate there are 600,000 cases of whooping cough, a highly contagious respiratory disease, in adults every year. Yet a national survey found that more than three-quarters of adults didn’t know the illness is widespread in the United States. To combat the misconception, the American Academy of Family Physicians has launched a campaign to promote vaccinations for adults and adolescents. The academy and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend a single-dose Tdap vaccine (tetanus, diphtheria, acellular pertussis) as a replacement for Td (tetanus and diphtheria toxoids) for continued protection. The experts say protection from childhood vaccination can wear off five to 10 years later. Whooping cough symptoms can include a persistent cough severe enough to break ribs or cause vomiting. Sufferers also can develop pneumonia. The infection, which initially resembles a cold, is most contagious before the coughing starts. The CDC estimates that only 2.1 percent of adults received a Tdap vaccine between 2005 and 2007, though most adults surveyed believe their vaccinations are up to date.

People who exercise boost their body image regardless of whether they reach fitness goals, such as increasing cardiovascular fitness, losing fat or gaining strength, a new University of Florida study says. “Body dissatisfaction is a huge problem in our society and is related to all sorts of negative behavior including yo-yo dieting, smoking, taking steroids and undergoing cosmetic surgery,” researcher and exercise psychologist Heather Hausenblas said in a press release. The findings, published in the Journal of Health Psychology, are important because the physical advantages of exercise are well documented but the psychological benefits are less studied.

LEARN MORE: www.cdc.gov/vaccines, search for “whooping cough”; www.FamilyDoctor.org/Vaccination Matters SOURCES: The American Academy of Family Physicians; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

SOURCE: University of Florida

ARTHRITIS

Magnets don’t help ease pain Magnetic wrist straps and copper bracelets, used worldwide to help alleviate musculoskeletal disorders, don’t relieve arthritis pain, a new study says. The research, published in Complementary Therapies in Medicine, conflicts with earlier studies in finding that any benefit in managing pain, stiffness and physical function in osteoarthritis was due to a psychological effect. The 45 participants, age 50 or older, all suffered from osteoarthritis. Each wore four wrist straps in random order over 16 weeks: two straps with different levels of magnetism, a copper bracelet and a demagnetized strap. There was no meaningful difference among the devices. LEARN MORE: www.arthritis.org SOURCES: Complementary Therapies in Medicine; The Arthritis Foundation

Laura Schwed

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