Running is an interesting thing to me.

I’ve been running for years. What kid doesn’t run? We run home for dinner, run during play and run to hide from the world. Running is part of the human experience. It is a necessity for hunting in many cultures, part of sexual experience in others, and in many parts of the world it is essential to survival. I’ve run for my life on occasion!

I run for the love and amazement of the human body. It’s been a long road. As a kid I ran track, but dropped it until my senior year in college. That’s when I morphed from cyclist to triathlete. I could swim and I could bike, but running? I figured I would make sense of it - afterall, it can’t be that hard.

I wasn’t fast. I tried to be fast. I did everything I could. I worked with coaches, ran races and did the drills (hill repeats, track workouts, etc…). My times came down, but I still was not the fastest. I bought gadgets, tracked my metrics, worked my limiters and focused, focused, focused. The results came in. Still not the fastest, but getting there.

Simultaneous to all this I was living life. Life has its own races and now in my early 30s, I’ve learned a few things. Several months ago I was at a fork in the road - continue on the path I was on, or simplify and use what I have learned toward an entirely new path. I chose the latter.

One night many months ago I couldn’t sleep. So in the middle of the night I got out of bed, put my racing flats on and just ran. I ran and ran and ran. Each step was freeing. I felt a connectedness to the universe and at peace in my soul. I loved the simplicity of the activity - one foot in front of the other. I was alive. I knew this was the next chapter in my running experiene: a simple and beautiful sport done for the love of running. Period. Don’t get me wrong, I love to compete and I like to do well. But now I was to running for running’s sake.

As I continued on my moon-lit journey I began to simplify. I took off my shirt, took off my shoes, stashed them behind a tree and kept running. My mind was racing as I felt the cold pavement below my feet, the mud left behind watered yards, and the texture of grass. I was alive and in the moment.

That was my first barefoot experience and since that time I learned there are a lot of other avid runners who are tired of the confinement of shoes and the “technology” that is supposed to enhance something that was divinely created. In that moment I became a barefoot runner.

Now, don’t mistake me here. I live in Phoenix, AZ. Running on trails here means jagged rocks, scorpions (potentially), snakes (rare), lizards, and endless amounts of harsh vegatation. Shoes are kinda a good thing here. As a result of simplifying, I have ditched my spongey trail runners for racing flats. And to my amazement I’ve learned I don’t need the cushioning! Not in the least. So, I am on the trails a lot. I love the mountains and enjoy being free and alone on its lone ridges. The views of the daily grind happening in the city below me are reminders of the life I refuse to live as I stand above it all. Above the smog, above the grit, above the rat race. I continue running…

Phoenix is sandy just as much as it is rocky and hostile. So with a little help from my friends at Vibram I’ve found a barefoot running shoe that enables me to hit the trails and enjoy the elements barefoot (almost). The Vibram Five Finger Sprints are the outward manifistation of my simplified life. I’ve discovered endless trails in these puppies and enjoy the slight protection from the harsh elements, but when I have the chance the VFFs come off!

Ryan.

[post originally published Aug/08 on Ryan's blog "Tales from TRAIL"]