Boston All-Star Barefoot Running Clinic- Updated

This morning's Vibram FiveFingers All-Star Barefoot Running Clinic at City Sports in Boston was fantastic! There were fittings for VFFs, including some men's sizes of the new Bikilas. Chris McDougall, Dr. Daniel Lieberman, and Corrado from Milan were the main speakers. The 200+ attendees were split into five groups with different 'coaches'. Mine was Dr. Lieberman. He was fabulous and answered many questions from myself and the rest of the group. We ran to and around Boston Common. After the running, there was a short Q+A with the speakers. It was an awesome experience and will probably be one of the highlights of Boston for me (of course, I'm not running the marathon on Monday :) ).

Now that I've had some days to think about my experience at the clinic, I thought I'd write about some things that I remember in particular. Some advice that Dr. Lieberman had about technique includes:

- Listen to YOUR body.
- Regarding cadence, do what feels right for you.
- When landing, land on the lateral ball of your foot (at the 4th and 5th metatarsal heads)
- Transition slowly! (Always good advice.)
- Don't push too hard too soon or you could end up with tears in your calf muscles (among other injuries).
- Enjoy what you're doing.
- Pain is never a good thing.

I'm so glad that I got to be in Dr. Lieberman's group, although I'm sure that the other groups had just as much as we did. He spent a lot of time answering all the questions that we had for him.

And here's some pics from the event.









And if you want to see a video of the clinic that Vibram put together, check it out on YouTube here.