Survivorship Bias: Are running injuries far more prevalent and damaging than we realise?

Of all the medical research papers that I have perused over time it would appear that the consensus view of running injuries is that every runner is injured at least once, possibly twice, every year. This figure varies depending on the paper you read.

But it struck me that all of these investigations into running injuries were conducted amongst those actually claiming to run, even if temporarily injured. This indeed is the first possible hint that we may be dealing with a “survivorship bias”,  a bias in the sampling that could seriously distort our understanding of the true incidence of running injuries.

So what is a survivorship bias, you may ask? The Wikipedia definition is:  

Survivorship bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently overlooking those that did not because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways. Survivorship bias can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored, such as when companies that no longer exist are excluded from analyses of financial performance. It can also lead to the false belief that the successes in a group have some special property, rather than just coincidence.

The research of running injuries typically looks only at those currently running (even if they're temporarily side-lined with injury).  These are the "survivors". We need to ask about those that have given up. A true reflection of running injuries therefore should include an analysis of past runners - those that used to run. It should not be limited to the survivors that are "active" runners.

Let me take this hypothesis one step further. Below is a very interesting chart showing the cumulative number of Comrades runners (finishers and non-finishers) over the period 1984-2013. The number of subjects is very large making the data set fairly robust. At first glance a couple of very interesting observations arise from this chart. 1) At the age of 40 there is a sharp decline in Comrades runners. 2) The proportion of non-finishers appears to increase after the age of 40 and especially in the 45+ group where they account for about a third, or more, of starters. 

My first impression when I saw this chart was that it reveals the possibility of a “survivorship bias” in much of the running injury research I had read. My reason for this observation is that the drop-off in numbers after the age of 40 is very sharp and somewhat unexpected. One would expect this drop-off to be more gradual and perhaps closer to the blue line I have inserted in the chart. This raises the question: “Why were these runners quitting Comrades?”.  Of course there could be a thousand reasons but the obvious possibility is that they are injured. And my anecdotal experience would suggest that this is a distinct likelihood.

OK. So there are a lot of long distance runners that stop running. In this instance they stop running Comrades and they do this around the age of 40 and we suspect injury is a factor. So what? What does this imply, if anything?

Well it changes everything. It means that any injury research amongst runners, and especially those over 40, should look not only at runners but also at runners that have quit running. This is the survivorship bias we know about. When assessing the incidence and nature of running injuries I believe that we will uncover significantly different results if the samples of observations include the group we could call “lapsed runners”. My belief is that we could expect the rate of injury to be much higher than currently revealed because we focus only on survivors at present. The “survivors” that are still running and volunteering for medical research are far less likely to be injured than those that have quit.

As a counterpoint you may well posit that my hypothesis about quitters, injuries and survivors is a mere rumination and has no empirical foundation. And yes, you may be right. But my anecdotal experience tells me otherwise. I constantly meet people that “used to run” but due to deteriorating knees, hips, ankles and other damaged impact zones have given up. They quit running. They give up because it’s too painful to run or because they simply can’t run at all. Often their running demise is passed off glibly (and incorrectly) as “old age”.

The survivorship bias in the research and understanding of running injuries leads me to my next point, another hypothesis. It is that traditional running shoes as we know (heels, anti pronation, toe lift, etc) are far more dangerous than we assume. And it is these self-same shoes that tend to be one of the "constants" across this group of lapsed runners more so than running style, training habits and so on. My belief is that over-built running shoes can give a wonderful temporary illusion of prowess. They are hugely seductive at both a brand and tactile experiential level. But the key is that this “veneer” of prowess is temporary. Running shoes may enhance athletic appearance in the short term but in the longer term the insidious, gradual, granular and cumulative damage will eventually reduce many runners to non-runners. Based simply on the aforegoing data I would suggest that running shoes are pretty certain to limit your happy running years. It seems like 10-15 years may be a reasonable interval of active running after which the chances of being side-lined are greater than the chance of continuing to run. And so I believe that running shoes are not only highly likely to injure you but that this will manifest most strongly only after an extended period of time. And this simply makes it so much easier for the aging injured runners to pass off their dilemma to some other spurious cause … such as “getting old”!

It is because of the long term gradual deleterious effect of traditional running shoes (call it slow poison) and a survivorship bias that our current medical research fails to deliver good reliable information. In turn we merely perpetuate damaging choices and behaviour.

That is my comment on survivorship bias and running injuries. I have no empirical evidence and I have conducted no statistically significant research. But I do recognise a flaw in data and research methodology when I see it, and I do know what runners and ex runners say when I talk to them.

Minimalist Misadventures: Chapter 2

It all started more than a year before the Foot of Africa Marathon when I bought a pair of Nike Free Run's. These shoes looked quite cool and I was impressed by their light weight. I had read some articles about a new trend involving lighter more elegant running shoes and I thought these might be the weapon of choice to kick start my otherwise dormant running programme. I had not been actively running for several years which in itself was not too unusual for me. Over a twenty six year road running history there were many times that I had taken a sabbatical for a year or two or three. During these off times I had explored the merits of flyfishing and motorcycling, but running always seemed to draw me back at some point and I would get going once again.  

The past few years however had been different. I wasn't running largely because I couldn't run. Well, I couldn't run for more than about 45 minutes, after which spasms and pain in my rear-end and hamstrings reduced me to a cripple. I had done the Google searches and the physio visits and after some temporary relief they all left me exactly where I had started before the intervention and the expense. My feeling was that age had finally caught up with me and I would not do much running in the years ahead which would soon see me turning fifty. The information at my disposal was that I possibly had a piriformis problem or a sciatic problem or in the opinion of one physiotherapist, my one leg was now suddenly shorter than the other. In any event the only real solution seemed to lie in a stretching routine and so I set about on an excruciating daily stretching programme. But every morning I was still afflicted with tension which was clearly worse than before. Stretching only seemed to add to my distress so I eventually gave up both stretching and running. 

And then I was drawn to the Nike Free Runs. With visions of renewed vigour I once again set about trying to develop some running fitness. It wasn't very inspiring and I thought I was getting stronger until I got to enter a half marathon which ended in the usual muscle spasms and walking. Even these new shoes were powerless against the vagaries of age, I thought. Some people kept on running forever but not me, I was one of the unlucky ones. My six foot frame which was never really suited to endurance running had caught up with me, as had several broken bones, including two vertebrae and a leg, from some motorbike mishaps. I would grow old fly-fishing. That was it. 

Who knows why I then spent time searching for information about running shoes but I did. I had already given my almost new Nike Free Runs to the gardener and I was developing a grudge against the retailers and big brand advertisers that promised so much and delivered so little at such exorbitant cost. Whatever they promised had not come my way. Yet for a strange reason, that to this day I cannot identify, I kept believing there must be a better way to run, a better way, that is, for me to run. And so late one night in December, after I had been trawling through countless internet sites looking for something that I didn't know existed, I found the Bite Xtension running sandal. This was incredible. A running sandal! Just the pictures of it excited me and I felt like I was living through a Eureka moment. I ran to my wife and loudly proclaimed "Why don't we run in sandals, who needs shoes?" It seemed so obvious to me and so compelling. 

And thus, the discovery process began. It wasn't really about Bite Xtension sandals which indeed are probably not that good. It was more about the art of running naturally. It was only a few days later and a few days before Christmas while standing in a queue at a bookstore, that I spotted a book called ‘The Complete Idiots Guide to Barefoot Running’. It struck me that this book was for COMPLETE idiots rather than being the COMPLETE guide for idiots. The insinuation was obvious. This book was on the rack for discounted items but even I knew that by picking it up I had relegated myself to the ranks of complete idiocy. But it was cheap and I bought it.

The Complete Idiots Guide to Barefoot Running is very easy to read and I was instantly drawn to the theory of lower impact midfoot striking, higher cadence and footstrikes under the centre of body mass. It just made sense to me and it all seemed so logical. The key to all of this was that man was made to run in shoes that were flat, or preferably no shoes at all. Raised heels were the enemy and we needed to rail against this unnecessary elevation that forced a most unnatural gait. Now that I had a little bit of information (which we all know marks the peak of danger) I was back on the Google machine looking for the next important step in my new pursuit. I was going to find some running sandals and buy them.

But this never happened. Instead I came across Steven Sashen's Invisible Shoe website which explained how to make your own minimalist running sandals. This sandal was in the spirit of footwear used by a tribe of Indians whose name I couldn't master .... Tara or Mara or something. The Complete Idiots Guide had given me what I needed to know and now Steven Sashen was showing me how to do it. I don't know why I was so fired up but I was. The information was so entrancing and I was dumbstruck by the prospect that not only had I been wrong for more than two decades but the whole world of runners was also wrong. We all did it wrong! 

The Invisible Shoe sandal is basically something along the lines of the Tarahumara Indian huarache, huarache being their home-styled sandals. At the time I knew nothing of this Indian tribe and I didn't bother about it too much because I was rushing off to the local hardware store to buy some rubber car mats and different types of string, rope or twine. I was going to make sandals. Back at home in the hot December afternoon I traced the outlines of my feet onto pieces of paper, transferred these to the rubber mats and cut out what was soon to be my first pair of running sandals. I made the necessary holes, threaded and looped the cord, and tied the flimsy things to my feet. The looping and knotting of the one-piece lace turned out be fairly simple but the final knot itself was not very secure. Would it hold, I wondered?  A short while later I opened the garden gate and burst upon the empty road in the setting sunlight. I felt heroic. This was going to be my running renaissance. 

The first few strides were very strange. It was a true sensory overload. I could feel everything in my feet and I felt distinctly closer to mother earth. Every sense of mine was heightened; my sight, my sense of smell and my hearing were all enhanced. I was much closer to the world around me. And I got even closer when my newly crafted huaraches disintegrated about five minutes into their inaugural outing. I looked down to see what had happened. The pathetic car mats had torn like pieces of old newspaper and were flapping like freshly caught fish. It was pointless. I gathered up the debris and walked home barefoot trying to look as though I always walked around half naked. I felt so undressed.

This was not going to be as easy as it seemed and perhaps because of this I became increasingly resolute that if I was going to run in footwear, I was going to make that damn footwear myself. I had read the Complete Idiots Guide and although the author, Dr Craig Richards, was promoting barefoot running in his book I was wise enough to reason that for me, barefooting was a bridge too far. I would go thin, I would go minimal but I was not ready to run around barefoot. But my immediate problem was that I had nothing minimal to run in and it was clear that the car mat concept was not up to the task. Of course I was still very far from realising that my body, and especially my feet, were light years away from the rigours of the task but naiveté is a glorious deception.

The time was December and I was on holiday. The days in Johannesburg at that time of the year are long and warm with frequent thunderstorms that turn the neighbourhoods into a shady labyrinth under the beautiful green canopy. They say Johannesburg is the worlds largest man-made forest and they are probably right, especially around where I live. The season and my relaxed mood were conducive to experimentation so the first mishap with car mats was not a significant set-back, I would simply get out there and find something better. But days turned to weeks and I wasn't really getting anywhere. 

My searches had led me to leather and I spent a lot of time trying to cut, glue and generally manhandle pieces of hide, some as thick as 6 millimetres. I had also given up on the huarache lacing system which always resulted in sandal movement on my feet. Was it the way I ran? Was it the shape of my feet? I was not sure and it didn't really matter because I was going to do something different.

The huarache sandal uses one long lace that starts underfoot between the big and first toes, and then, simply put, goes right around the foot including the heel while crossing underneath the sole twice, on either side of the ankle. It finishes back up on the top of the foot where it is finally secured to itself. Tensioning one lace that goes right around the foot and underneath the sole twice, is more than a nightmare and for me it was impossible. I accepted defeat.

After a couple of months I decided to relegate the huarache lacing system to the trash heap and I gladly embraced some features of modernity including Velcro, elastic and metal eyelets. My lacing system mimicked the huarache style, was more labour intensive to set up, but worked pretty well once everything was in place. Most importantly however, my foot stayed planted on top of the sole and didn't inch inexorably sideways.

During February, which was in retrospect my Leather Period, I and my family went away for several days to a small village in the highlands a few hundred kilometres from Johannesburg. It was Dullstroom, a well-known fly fishers haven which also happened to be the thing I was going to do a lot of while there. Not only was I going to fish as much as I could but I was going to walk around, uninterruptedly, in my newly crafted leather sandals. The soles of these sandals were made of such thick and rigid leather that I had spent hours punching small perforations in them to try and gain some flexibility. I was not sure if I would ever be able to run in these hard, inflexible, leather things but I was going to try, and getting them soft and supple was what I needed to do first. So I walked and fished and walked and fished until one day I was fishing a few kilometres from our house when a large thunderstorm broke around me. This was not the time to hang around with a nice antenna-like fishing rod attached to my body. Lightning was striking capriciously and worryingly close, while rain was pelting down in buckets. 

I set off running down the muddy single-track track, later becoming a farm road but equally submerged and sloshy. I trotted back to the house and quickly removed my precious sandals to clean them. All the little holes I had made in the soles were full of mud and small stones and I used a big abrasive brush to do some deep scouring in hot water. I brushed and scrubbed and brushed and scrubbed. And as I brushed and scrubbed I watched the leather delaminate from the rubber portion on top of the soles, the so-called footbed. My sandals fell apart, literally in my hands. I felt trapped ... what could be happening? My handiwork was coming to nought. And then I realised I was washing these sandals in hot water and the glues I had used were dissolving in the heat. My sandals were toast. The next day I put the leather pieces out to dry and later when I retrieved them I found that not only had they dried nicely, and were crisp like big cornflakes, but they had shrunk too making them useful only to a midget. I looked for the dustbin. And that marked the end of my Leather Period. It was not so much the glue problem that ended my Leather Period but the realisation that leather and water do not mix. Making a "fair weather only" sandal would not work.

Despondency set in once I returned home. My sandal exploits were pretty futile and I was miserable. I had not yet made it public, but at that point I had a booking to hike down the Fish River Canyon in Namibia a few months ahead and I was secretly harbouring the prospect of walking in self-made sandals …. now my private ambitions were in shreds. As for running, I wasn't doing much of that either. What would I wear on my feet? I really wanted to try and run in sandals but my regular visits to footwear stores left me dejected and disillusioned. Everything had a heel and most “athletic” footwear was just too big and clunky. But then a marvellous thing happened. I found an EVA foam supplier in the south of Johannesburg.

EVA foam is a synthetic rubber-type product much like that used in soles of regular running shoes. It has similar characteristics to the more widely used polyurethane soles and is also used extensively in the footwear industry. My new EVA supplier could provide me with sheets of this stuff in thicknesses varying from 3mm to 15mm. When I went to their warehouse I was like a kid let loose in a candy store. The sheets of EVA foam were stacked everywhere and I kept staring at them. There was so much of it as well as other products like 2mm rubber outersoles of various tread patterns. It made me think of the Phillips rubber we used to put on our leather soled shoes when I was young. This was exactly what I had been looking for during the past few months. I gathered as many sheets of various thickness that I could carry, and rushed home to get busy with my cutting knife. And did I cut! This was my Cut and Glue Period. I made sandals at night. I made sandals in the day. I made sandals over weekends. I made sandals while I lay in bed at night. I made sandals at the dinner table. I made sandals in my office. I didn't stop. I was incorrigible.  

Most importantly at this point I was able to make a sandal that I could actually run in. They were not very good in retrospect, but at the time I thought I was forging a new path in the evolution of footwear. With a surfeit of EVA material at my fingertips I was able to make sandals with varying sole thickness and although I was running very short distances I could choose from a range of options. I could pontificate whether it would be a 3mm day or a 5mm day or perhaps an 8mm day. My running started becoming a daily event as a new routine manifested itself. I was now running in sandals as I entered my peak Cut and Glue period. 

Minimalist Misadventures

We had travelled by bus in the early morning to this point in the middle of nowhere. The sky was dark but the first signs of morning light were appearing over the horizon. The air was clear after several days of heavy rain but again the clouds were building on the horizon and I had no idea whether the day ahead would be clear or rainy. It was the Cape after all, anything was possible.

Several buses offloaded the few hundred runners that huddled around in the half light, some drinking cheap coffee provided by the organiser. We were in the middle of a very large valley and the evidence of the heavy rains of the past week was clear to see. The famed Cape fynbos was wet and the gravel shoulders of the narrow tar road were alternately stony mud and deep puddles. I looked at my watch. It was about half an hour before the 6 am start of the run. This was a standard marathon that included a run on unpaved farm roads, a single track mountain crossing and return, on tar, to our original town of departure, Bredasdorp. It was truly a mixed run and a hard one. 

The buses were used to take runners 12 kilometers out of the town of Bredasdorp to a featureless point on an unnamed and desolate road so as to keep the route to a standard 42 kilometres. My friend Trevor had suggested the night before that instead of the austere and cold bus we simply ran the 12 kilometres to the start point, thus turning our race into the first ever Foot of Africa Ultra! This proposal was not embraced with fondness by Mike and I.

Mike is my brother-in-law and much like myself, he had seen his running endeavours diminish over the previous few years and together we had agreed to run this marathon in a valiant effort to turn around our looming physical dilapidation.  So there were the three of us .... waiting .... with all the others.

The area immediately around us was pretty flat but a little further out mountains arose on all sides. I wondered where we would be running. The buses had stopped at the intersection with a small gravel road that on the left hand side was nothing more than twin tracks through the scrub. To the right the gravel road was a little bigger and headed away from us on the tar at an oblique angle. The morning was getting lighter but it was not readily evident because the clouds in the west had surreptitiously moved overhead and the last of the morning stars were now lost behind low-hanging heavy clouds. Although it wasn't light it wasn't dark either, a kind of no man's land in time. The humidity was high and it was difficult to work out if it was actually cold or not. Cold is something I do not appreciate but after some cursory deliberation I decided it was not actually cold, just a damp illusion of cold.

  

And then it started to rain lightly. What the .....! This was not supposed to happen. Despite the recent flood-like rains the worlds finest weather forecasters had predicted that at 6 am on the Saturday morning of the race, the sun would shine and it would only start raining again at the exact point I finished running. That's what they said and I believed it. Now I was getting wet in the drizzle. I looked down at my new Newton shoes. Bright red and so clean. And then I looked around and pondered all the mud that lay between me and the finish. This didn't add up to "happiness" and it also was not part of the Plan.

Clutched in my hand was a cloth bag housing my running sandals, thin hard sandals that I had made a month earlier. This little bag contained the "Plan". Both Mike and Trevor knew that I wanted to run this marathon in minimalist sandals but they also knew that if conditions were not right I would simply stick to traditional running shoes. And rain was a condition that I considered "not right".  So here I was caught between a cloud and pool of mud. The time was about 5:45am and I knew I had to make a decision fast. I looked across the road at the tog bag truck which was quickly filling up as runners dumped their superfluous clothing and other accoutrements. This truck would take all the kit to the finish and it was going to take my running shoes or my running sandals. 

Runners were starting to move a short way down the road to a point where the race would officially start. I looked around for Trevor but he had disappeared. He had recently struggled with some foot injuries and had his own demons to deal with. That's when I saw the barefoot runner. And then another runner in Vibram Five Fingers. Suddenly it seemed like this place was overrun with minimalist runners. What an insult!  Not only did I have company but I had moronic competition too. Barefoot! Across these mountains. I looked again at the barefoot bloke. No, he must be a farm kid. Or maybe he didn't have a frontal lobe. Something was amiss. Secretly I had always been quite proud of my sandals but now in the company of these fringe runners I was merely an "also ran". Just another "wannabee". My dejection must have been palpable as Mike turned to me and said "just do it, put them on".

"Should I?" I asked.

"Just do it" he said again. And in an instant I knew the rain was nothing and I knew it would never be cold and I also knew my sandals were more than the task ahead, so I quickly and inauspiciously put them on, walked over to the tog bag truck and tossed my indolent Newtons into the back.

I was ready to go and my sandals felt great. They were well worn and if nothing else they were much lighter than any conventional running footwear. We followed the other runners and grouped at a point on the road even though it was still not clear which way we would start running. I didn't care. I could run anywhere. Fortunately the light rain was really light and I thought that it may be possible that it did not turn into anything worse. Finally a gunshot went off and runners started to move. Trevor, Mike and I bade our farewells and set off. This would be my first marathon in my homemade sandals.

The Foot of Africa Marathon is a truly wonderful event. It is run in the countryside around Bredasdorp in South Africa not far from Cape Agulhas which is the southern most tip of Africa. The run itself is both a road race and a cross country race as it traverses a mountain range, and because of this it is considered quite tough. I had run this race some time earlier and when perusing my running record I found that it was a full 20 years earlier. Any memories of the run were therefore somewhat unreliable and indeed more-so because they had changed the route over the years.

Earlier in the year I had approached Mike with the idea of running this race which he readily agreed to, and then, because more was merrier, I looked up my first ever running mate, Trevor, and propositioned him too. While Mike and I lived in Johannesburg Trevor lived in Cape Town where he and I together had taken up running 26 years earlier. Trevor, in his spare time builds rockets and he sent me emails of some big things shooting up into the sky. I was impressed and to cap him I said that although I couldn't build a rocket I would modify my running sandal design and build a new one for the Foot of Africa Marathon, and with middle-class grandiosity I would call it the T. Rocket. And so we had a Plan and some Rockets.

Now we were running the Foot. There were no distance markers and I was struggling to work out my pace. It didn't really matter because whatever my pace, it was too fast. I hadn't run a marathon in 6 years and I knew that the tough course ahead was going to test me. For the first few kilometers things were fine and I was pleased that my sandals felt better than I could have imagined. I was quite exuberant and even managed to chat to a couple of other runners that expressed interest in my footwear, my T. Rockets. We were running on farm roads that were very stony at times and always very undulating. The long uphills were gentle but long, and the short downhills were mostly a bit sharper but always shorter than the uphills, and so we gradually gained height rising above the valley floor. The weather was pretty good for running. A few drops of rain came down but it never caused a problem and after an hour or so things got drier. The temperature was also fairly mild for a while. Finally a distance marker at the 10 kilometer point showed that I was indeed probably running a bit faster than I should and my thoughts of slowing down got serious impetus when we suddenly came upon a tape across the road. This was the end of the fun run. We were directed off the road onto a barely discernible track that led literally straight up the mountainside to our right. 

This track was nothing more than a small watercourse with the run-off of the previous weeks' rain streaming down the sandy channel. The water was dark and brackish contrasting strongly against the whitish sand underfoot. This sand was nothing more than sea sand and so the going got tough in the soft wet riverine furrow. One had to run in straddle mode with feet on either side of the burbling sprite. I was scared of slipping and vainly crimped up my toes hoping to grip the sides of the waterlogged trench. Somehow it worked and slowly we gained altitude finally exiting the rut onto a vague jeep track higher up the mountain. We were getting close to the top and the views around us were widening beyond the 180 degree point. Beauty was everywhere and my gaze back south searched for the hidden tip of Africa but the air was still a little hazy with cloud and mist. But this too began to break up as we headed northward across the top of the mountain range.

Running over the top of the mountain was exquisite as we were far from civilisation and the vistas were now a full 360 degree extravagance. The Cape fynbos, renowned for its beauty was in full splendour and the air was, as they say, like champagne. We passed the halfway mark somewhere near the highest point of the run and I was mildly ecstatic.

Then the downhill running started. I think it was about 5 kilometres of downhill running. Down, down, down to a small hamlet called Napier. Five kilometres that crushed my mild ecstasy.  Running in thin uncushioned flat shoes is pretty different to big well sprung traditional running shoes. This difference is noticeable at all times but none so much as running downhill. In fact the difference when running downhill is not only about the shoe it is also about the way we run. It was for me, as I discovered with each painful meter of descent, inordinately hard.

My running pace down the mountain was probably slower than my earlier pace up the other side. I tried to save what ever was worth saving in my legs but I wasn't sure what would be left if I ever got back onto level ground. My watch didn't help much is it no longer served the purpose of timekeeping it was a mere mocking device that showed the extent of the ever growing lapsed time. Things around me seemed to remain the same, I was going nowhere, but the time was always advancing. We eventually ran through Napier which is a very pretty place but to me, at the time, it was one big bad rollercoaster ride. The hills in Napier are ridiculous for such a small village and I wondered why on earth they had populated a place where going to the village centre was akin to a mountain expedition.  And then, after the final desperate descent at the periphery, this village spews you out like a spent husk with only the big tar road back to Bredasdorp remaining.

That is when my feet started to reject me. My unsupporting sandals, the unforgiving soles, no longer felt quite as funky as they had earlier. I wondered about the barefoot runner. The farm roads and mountain path were both a lot softer than this tar. My feet also now had about 35 kilometers in them as well as one big mountain crossing. It just made things worse. I could prove all of this because my arches were collapsing, my toes were straining, and a mild tension was building up in my achilles tendons.

Running back to Bredasdorp was not easy. And it was not much fun other than the farm labourer that yelled out "Haai Meneer, hou met die plakkies!" The sun had come out. It was hot. The road was always going up, or so it seemed and there was a fair amount of heavy duty traffic.  Sometimes the gusts of air turbulence from passing trucks would knock me sideways. But slowly, very slowly I inched closer to Bredasdorp, finally entering the town together with a burst of happy Saturday shopper traffic, and of course another hill.

This was the hill that 20 years earlier had reduced me with cramps and spoilt my chances of a silver medal by a mere minute or so. And as I crested this hill and lengthened my stride for the last kilometer to the finish I was struck down with cramps yet again. They say lightning never strikes the same place twice yet this ominous sign proved otherwise. My hamstrings were cramped badly and I hopped around knowing instantly that there was no easy way out of this predicament. The finish line was about 1500 meters away and it could now take a long, long time to get there. My watched laughed at me ..... again.

But get there I did, and feigning some casual strength I accelerated across the last muddy field before entering the finish arena. And so ended my first minimal sandal marathon.

I never again saw the barefoot runner after about 5 kilometres into the race and I never saw the Vibram Five Fingers runner other than at the start. After finishing I collected my bag filled with vivid red Newtons and slowly walked back to my hotel which incidentally meant following the last 1500m of the race route. I knew that I was OK. The walk back helped. Everything was fine. Tomorrow would harbour some aches and pains but nothing more. As I was walking in tired contemplation, another runner, still running to the finish, called out to her mate alongside her, "There he is, there he is. There's the runner in sandals!"  As she passed me she asked "Did you run all the way in those sandals?" and I shouted back "Yes, yes I did".

  

Solo on Table Mountain, Solo Anywhere: The Art of Less

The Art of Less

It is with some reticence that I admit a few old photographs of me have recently been unearthed. Moreover they have been appropriated for commercial display! But on closer inspection I was not distressed. In fact I was quite proud to find that my interest in minimal footwear was indeed something that coincided with an intellectual theme that had revealed itself many years earlier in my somewhat aberrant activities.

As I have grown older I have become more sensitive to the excess of modem consumptive living and I have become especially distressed at the fact that as a society we compulsively tie our happiness to acquisition. This is what we're taught from a young age. The lessons are not overt. But they are nevertheless explicitly implicit and very compelling! We learn that "things make us happy" and a good life is one in which we pursue and accumulate stuff. Material things. Within this philosophy there is no doubt in my mind that minimalist running is about more than simply getting thin shoes. It is an intellectual and emotional pursuit. It's a questioning of the status quo. My earlier climbing activities also, I am pleased, amply demonstrate my rejection of stuff and my embrace of "LESS".


There is a fallacy in the pursuit of material gain and I'm pleased to claim that at a personal level I have managed, maybe only subconsciously at first, to beat down a different path looking for alternatives.


As a society we are increasingly and tragically ME focused. This obsession with self is so perfectly manifested in the ACQUIRE mentality. Everything that we gather around us serves to reinforce a ME culture. STUFF is about ME and nothing more. The supremacy of SELF! But indeed in the midst of this stuff-fest there are real lessons that we fail to recognise, and this is the tragedy of our condition. I will give an example. A parable.

"Look at the night sky. Look at the stars. There is a wonder of light travelling an incomprehensible distance to reach our vision and radiate in the night sky. We look at the stars and wonder where they are and what they are like. But many of the stars that we see are no longer stars. They have long since burnt out. And still, even after the death of the star, its light travels outward through space for a time that we cannot grasp.We see shining lights in the sky while the stars have long since gone. And this is much like the claimed radiance of our modern society. It has emerged through time as a "pinnacle of civilization" and we see the brilliance of our own talents reflected all around us. But like the light from ancient stars, we stand on the shoulders of countless generations that went before us. We are the sum of all our forebears. This is why our self-actualising, self-focused mode of living is so sad, because at a societal level we underplay and even ignore the effort, resource, talent and greatness of those that walked before us. Our drive for material excess says very clearly that it's all about ME and worse still it rewards the ME focus. We need to recover our genetic memory. We need to learn to communicate from the heart. We need to see ourselves in the context of ancient wisdom. The little splash of "colour" we think we are adding to the big canvas may indeed be very dull. While our technological prowess and self-absorption runs ahead relentlessly, we forego real talent and wisdom.

We need to display compassion for nature. We need to build families. We need to build societies. We need to embrace real friendship. We need to uncover real challenges. We need to test our resolve. We need to to rediscover humour and health. We need to learn to dream. We need to value space ..and we need to grow in wisdom."


The London based company, Watershed Entrepreneurs has as it's mission, the identification and nurturing of independent, creative and entrepreneurial thought. They want to do it in a way that benefits not only us but also those that are yet to walk this way. They want to do it in a way that is measured beyond mere balance sheet gains. And this is why I am deeply pleased to be sharing in their advocacy.

Minimalism doesn't stop at your feet. It needs to overwhelm your soul. It is more than being tough and strong. It is about art and the wisdom of subtraction. Happiness, if you haven't discovered yet, is a subtractive condition.

More at some future point!

Below is the article from Simon Middleton, director at Watershed Entrepreneurs:

Defining Entrepreneurial Success

A recurring litany when referring to entrepreneurs is the high failure rate. Try to define ‘what it takes’ to make a success of an innovative idea and you will find an array of hypothetical models of attributes, psychological profiles and traits, as well as ‘motherhood and apple-pie comments’ about what makes for a successful entrepreneur.

Yet how often is a rigorous de-risking process emphasised? Successful investors will tell you that they invest in the people (rather than the product or service) so we assume that they invest well in the process of assessment. There remains a high failure rate nevertheless, and this a question mark  around the topic of ‘rigour’. Is there a solution? Yes, we know there is.

Watershed uses as an analogy one of our colleagues who, 32 years ago, did a solo ‘fingers and toes’ traverse of the front face of Table Mountain, Cape Town. At the time, Andrew was 18 years old. He currently runs a successful business in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Prior to making this traverse Andrew had thoroughly researched, practiced and managed all the elements that might destabilize him. He had gone through the most rigorous de-risking process before he ventured. He worked it out for himself.

The life-giving differentiator on this occasion was how to provide his mind with the emotional ecology that ensured he was focused on the process and not on the absence of supporting equipment. To focus on the negative in this challenge creates fear which, in pure physiological terms, would be disastrous. The risk of failure was always there, but the percentage had been profoundly lowered by his rigorous attention to detail; skill, external climbing conditions, physical and mental preparedness.

This level of de-risking is based on orthodox competency insight that has been around in both theory and application since the 1940s.

The saying ‘Past behaviour is a good predictor of future behaviour’ means using insights into human behaviour that work off this simple psychological truth. Take the case of Andrew. We know for a fact that in terms of a successful climber behaviour, he demonstrated capability more than the ordinary. Failure would have ended his life. He is not average. Rather he is exceptional, and it is this level of performance that holds our interest.

We know that if we interviewed Andrew and a sample of climbers who achieved similar levels of excellence, we would be able to derive a statistically validated behavioural profile. This would show us the levels of coping behaviour (or competence) needed by someone to replicate his success.

Using experience taken from the commercial world of competency profiling, we could predict a high level of performance success where we recruited a mountaineer with a similar behavioural profile.

In fact, the level of predictability is sufficiently compelling to suggest that a savvy business leader would insist that all the strategic roles (the ones that ensure the sustainable execution of the strategy at all levels within the system) are subjected to this discipline. It is precisely this insight that can identify and de-risk the successful entrepreneur.

It would be fair to say that most consultants will talk a good game when it comes to this technology. The result, generally, is a usual “mish-mash” of approaches which are next to useless in predicting and ensuring high performance. However, there are a few who really understand the power and criticality of this discipline.

Creating an Entrepreneurial Competency Profile means identifying, in detail, the coping behaviour used by successful entrepreneurs. Deconstructing this into levels of granularity can take days to evaluate and codify, but results in a robust profile of an entrepreneur.

The value of the resulting insight is that within very high levels of predictability - upwards of  70% - one can predict whether a person is likely to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Intriguingly, it is possible to gather sufficient insight at an early age – before 20 years old – whether there is an “entrepreneurial predisposition”. Being in a position to make a comprehensive comment on the competency levels an individual is, for executing the required tasks expected of an entrepreneur, of enormous significance to an investor.

We know there are three distinct phases that arc over the commercialization process. Each one requires a distinctive set of necessary behaviours. The value of this insight is the capacity to identify which phases will challenge the entrepreneur the most and where an investor needs to potentially find additional people to augment the competency set of the entrepreneur.

Creating an ecosystem in which an entrepreneurial idea thrives starts with de-risking the people involved and ensuring that a sustainable team of people is brought together. The innovative idea or invention itself is secondary to the human capacity to execute it.

Simon Middleton
3 Oct 2013

PUFfeR: 80km Ultra Trail Run in Cape Town

Puffer is an acronym of sorts for Peninsula Ultra Fun Run - PUFfeR. This is my experience.

We were sitting on buses and trundling in the darkness towards Cape Point, the rocky promenade that extends south from Cape Town ending in a sharp and precipitous knife-edge that drops into the ocean.. This was where, they say, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. I wasn't sure if it was true, but it makes for a good story and  it certainly made me feel like a pioneer as we headed south away from Cape Town.

It was pitch dark and the bus was obviously travelling very slowly. The trip took forever and they kept the lights on the bus so that all the runners could see each other as they babbled and bantered about previous running adventures. I sat quietly on the seat and looked around. Everyone seemed to have lights mounted on their foreheads. I didn't have any surplus kit and I wondered if it would be the first decision I'd regret.

Eventually the bus slowed down and made a u-turn coming to a standstill facing the direction from where we had come. Silence descended as everyone clambered off, and like lost spacemen, people wondered off into the foliage to relieve themselves. Yet more runners were gathering around the public toilets, eerily lit in the weak florescent glow of an old light bulb.

How it happened is unclear, but something prompted the dispersed group of about 120 runners to move northwards in the large parking area to a point where there were two warmly clad men, one of whom produced a gun. I couldn't hear what they were saying and with the first attempt at firing the starters gun .... nothing happened. The group burst into agitated chatter and then the mans arm went up again, the gun fired, and we started to move, running along the tar stretch back to the entrance of the Cape Point Nature Reserve from where we had come.

Quickly the runners spread out and I saw that my lack of headlight was no hindrance. The road was in very good nick and the light from others made an additional headlight redundant. I also hate unnecessary baggage. And so I jogged along in the darkness wondering what pace I should be aiming for. Academic stuff really. I couldn't see my watch. I had no idea of distance. The pace was whatever it was. But it didn't take long for the group to spread and I was soon running on my own in perfect blackness with a faint glow appearing to our left ahead of the rising sun.

After leaving the Nature Reserve the PUFfeR stays on tar for about another 20 kays which means that many serious trail runners are somewhat disparaging about this event. But I knew what was coming later. I knew the terrain over Constantiaberg and Table Mountain because I had run a lot on these mountains many years earlier when I lived in Cape Town. And so the tar didn't bother me. I was satisfied that we were really doing a mountain run. The tar portion was a warm up and quite a hard one too, climbing for a few kilometers over Redhill near Simonstown. By this stage I was starting to get a little worried because so many runners were moving faster than I was and I had no idea how to calculate a pacing plan. Being so far behind where I thought I should be left me feeling despondent.

At about 25 kays the route suddenly veered off to the left onto a single track pathway on soft sand through the famous Cape fynbos (indigenous Cape flora). This was it! Here it was! I was very excited. The thick smell of the fynbos hanging in the damp air, and the crunchy sand underfoot was so reminiscent of what I had loved years earlier. It was like entering an earthbound tangible "heaven". I was so comfortable. My soul, in out-of-body levitation, I felt light and strong. While overhead the clouds hung low and the sunlight failed to break through. The temperature was low enough to wear a long-sleeved top but I stuck to a t-shirt.

After some more path-finding through the fynbos we eventually headed around the back of Fish Hoek on some large tar roads and some busy Saturday junctions. This was another reason that some trail junkies turned their noses up at the PUFfeR but for me it just added to the texture and ambience of the run. Exiting Fish Hoek I found my mate Trevor, standing starkly upright alongside the road. I looked forward to him joining me for the remainder of the run as a second. Who knows what the distance was, but I think it was close to 40 kays which meant about 40 kays to go. So we still had quite a lot ahead of us, in fact, quite a lot of hard stuff.

Soon we reached a large refreshment station and I tanked up on Rehydrate, a big chelsea bun and some water from the welcoming helpers. Leaving this water point we slowly worked our way through the Silvermine Reserve and I managed to unleash such a constant torrent of verbosity that I missed most of the surrounds. Trevor generally is a very taciturn fellow, but on this day he was beyond loquacious as was I. We chatted incessantly like a pair of old ladies (is that politically incorrect?).

I do recall some very steep rocky inclines and some sandy sections and I recall that we lost our way at one point. Eventually seeing a few runners in the thick fynbos away to our left, we were able to head in the direction required. My earlier euphoria at entering the fynbos was not enduring. The Cape had had so much rain that most of the local vegetation now stood at anywhere from 6 foot to 10 foot tall, which meant that it was often impossible to get one's bearings. You just couldn't see beyond the path!

After leaving the Cape Point Nature Reserve a lot of runners had  passed me. I hadn't panicked but I had entered a mild state of dejection and fear of being left behind especially on some of the long uphills. But now in Silvermine, about 50 kays from the start, things were starting to change. I wasn't getting "dropped", and on some of the ascents I was actually gaining ground. This dear reader, is very motivating.

It wasn't long, after ascending quite a way up Canstantiaberg that the route made a steep and long descent to connect with a contour path which would eventually lead to another mountain (Vlakkenberg) and yet further on, to Constantia Neck at the back of Table Mountain. There was still so much to do! But I was getting inspired. I knew that I could get "downhill" fairly quickly and by this I mean down mountain paths. And the steeper, rockier, the better. With the tar behind us and the terrain becoming a little more technical I had a better chance! So I decided to start moving with a bit more conviction and managed to catch up with a few runners up ahead. I didn't want to push too much but felt good knowing that I could still cover ground fairly quickly, if needed.

Constantiaberg with the cave on the right known as Elephants Eye

On our way to the Vlakkenberg Trevor starting dropping behind and I knew I couldn't wait for him. I felt certain that something had happened to cause his loss of pace. It turned out later he had been sick since the previous day but did not want to let me down on "race" day. He should have been in bed! So, a fine guy all round!

Looking back up Vlakkenberg - Dutch for flat mountain

After Vlakkenberg came the Constantia Neck refreshment station. Again I took in more Rehydrate and chelsea buns. I dilly-dallied for a while, chatting and messing around, giving up about 15 minutes, and then headed up the very steep path that leads to the back of Table Mountain, otherwise known as the Back Table.

The pictures are from 2 years that I ran the PUFfeR. The second time in sandals. Here, approaching the Constantia Neck waterpoint.

This was it. This was my territory. I kept talking to myself. I stopped worrying about cramps and any other inconvenience. I wanted to move. Where were the other runners? I searched ahead but could only make out one shape in front. Dammit! Keep moving I said. Just MOVE. I wanted that person. I wanted to catch up? Move, move, move! We were about 20 kays from the finish and the best bits lay ahead. We had moved higher and the fynbos was shorter. Nothing more than 2 feet. It was all short grassy scrub and a lot of course, crystalline sandstone. I loved it.

At every point possible, I would break into a quick jog. And then more clambering. Rocks, gullies, ditches, water, steps.

Run, sidestep, lunge, clamber, run. Move, move, move. Great! And the human shape ahead drew closer and as he came into focus I saw it was Paul who had been running with Trevor and I on Constantiaberg. Darn! I should never have spent so much time at the Neck. I greeted him and moved on. The top of Table Mountain was still about 250 meters higher and possibly about 1 or 2 kilometers ahead. Now I could see many other runners. Little groups of 3 or 4. Go go go.

On the way to Maclears Beacon at the summit of Table Mountain I managed to pass 26 runners. I counted. I loved it. At the summit there was another checkpoint and refreshment station. I hardly stopped. I gulped down a bit of water and kept moving. The top of Table Mountain is indeed a beautiful place. Very flat and quite eerie in it's own way. It's big too. Getting from one side to the other can take a long time. Someone once told me it's 4 kilometers wide. Who cares. I was moving and feeling good despite the occasional cramping twinges in my legs.

Looking down Platteklip Gorge from the top of Table Mountain

The day was still sublime, with low clouds, no wind and a soft light casting a surreal glow. It felt as though I was living in a movie scene. But the ethereal peace and abeyance of pain is over when you get to the start of Platteklip Gorge, the perilous knee pounding, rock strewn route down the front of Table Mountain. Platteklip Gorge is ridiculous. They call them steps but the rocks, re-positioned on the handmade pathway, are a jagged, contorted mess of careless geography.

Platteklip Gorge descends diagonally down the front of Table Mountain starting about 2 thirds of the distance from the summit on the far left to the Cable Station on the far right

In 2015 during my second running of this event I happened to be around when a runner had had an accident and needed to be airlifted out of Platteklip Gorge. We had to wait for the evacuation.

A runner rescue after an accident in Platteklip Gorge 2015

The view to the finish near the harbour from Table Mountain

To get down Platteklip Gorge you have to employ, in random succession, a series of lunges, plunges, leaps, bounces and hurdles. At every point you feel you are a hairs breadth from diving head first into a pile of capriciously strewn boulders. And some do. But I loved it. This was downhill. I rushed ahead with relentless abandon.

Coming after the Platteklip descent are a few busy roads and a dismal pathway down the side of Signal Hill which again ensured a route finding mishap. I just couldn't run on ahead because I didn't know the way and when others caught up with me, they too either didn't know the way or were so stricken with cramps that we had keep stopping for a thigh or calf massage. But I got to the finish, at the oceans edge next to the Cape Town harbour, quite delirious and fortunately, quite bouncy.

My parents had visited to support on both times I ran this event

The PUFfeR is a splendid run. Quite exceptional in fact. As youngsters Trevor and I had made a "sport" of running up and down Table Mountain. We did it for fun when none had even thought of running on a mountain and trail running, as a concept, had yet to be invented. (At the time there were indeed a few runners in Scotland and Wales who had started "fell" running.)

So, getting back to Table Mountain after years of absence was superb and finishing second in the masters group simply felt good. But then ... it's not a race.

You can make contact with the organisers (Fish Hoek Athletic Club) here: www.facebook.com/PufferTrailRun/
or  www.fishhoekac.com/services/the-puffer

Measure your feet for t-rockets

To start get sufficient unmarked white paper and a pen and ruler. Draw the outline of your foot keeping the pen upright. If you tilt the pen it will change the shape of your foot which is unhelpful.

Now get the pen between the big and second toe and draw a nice mark at the deepest point. Do not push in too hard but record the spot firmly.

The next step is to mark the Medial and Lateral Malleolus. These are the bumps that form the inside and outside of your ankle. I am pointing at the lateral malleolus in the pic below. Carefully trace an arc that shows where your malleoli are when you are standing with legs (or lower legs) upright. You must mark the malleolus on either side of your ankle. The position of the malleoli is very important.

Once you have marked them get a ruler and mark a series of 1 centimeter intervals. Scan this diagram and send it to me. When we print it we need to check that the calibration is right. This is why you need to put in the centimeter intervals. (If you only have inches mark as such). Finally write down your normal running shoe size  UK SIZE or US SIZE.

Your final pic will look like this above.

Send your diagram to me at orders@t-rockets.co.za. Send the right foot diagram only. If you feet are significantly different sizes, then send a diagram for both your right and left foot.

Should you have any other questions mail me and I'll be happy to assist.