Sacramento Running News

Now that your December marathon is done and the baked goods are piling up around the office, are you worried about packing on the pounds over the holidays?

To investigate the impact of when you exercise , a team of sadistic, Belgian researchers put a group of athletes on a horrible, high-fat diet (probably not much different than the standard American holiday diet) and had them not workout, workout before breakfast, or workout after breakfast.

Naturally, the non-exercising group packed on the pounds (those lazy bastards!). But there was a significant difference in the weight gain between the other two groups.

The after-breakfast exercise group, of course, put on less weight than the non-exercise group, but they still gained. However, the pre-breakfast exercisers hardly gained any weight at all.  Their blood chemistry was better too, showing better insulin response.

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I have been known to gently tease the fans of barefoot running, and wearers of minimalist shoes. However, I’m not against running barefoot, but in fact believe it can be a helpful training tool.

As part of my training for CIM, I ran a mile or so barefoot on grass a couple of evenings a week. I gave it up when the days got shorter and it was too dark after work to spot the dog-doo.

A non-running friend of mine told me about a coworker sharing his devotion to barefoot running, saying that we’d evolved to run barefoot. My friend wondered if maybe we had evolved to invent shoes.

Let’s just say I’m a bit skeptical about the hype. Barefoot running zealots claim that running barefoot will cure almost any running related ailment. If you are injured while running barefoot, they say, it is because you are doing it wrong.

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