GOING MINIMALIST

"Listen to your feet" was the lesson I was trying to learn after reading Born To Run, Christopher McDougall's groundbreaking book on barefoot running. 

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Life had just taken a minimalist turn in the hot early summer of 2010 when my two teenagers decided to have only one home in the looming divorce settlement. Naturally, that would be where they were already living with my soon-to-be ex-wife in the house we had built a few years before. The three bedroom rental I had created for the kids was suddenly superfluous, so it was time to downsize. Going native in footwear seemed in the spirit of that change. It also made good biomechanical sense that the legs and back should respond to foot sensations by automatically adjusting into a more stable long distance posture.

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"Don't run on gravel" was the first lesson, sent after three runs in my new minimalist shoes on the shady and cool Greenbrier River Trail, the only level surface besides a track in southeastern West Virginia.

"Don't run on hills" was next, learned after two weeks of sore balls from uphill leans and soles from downhill slaps on the steaming blacktop around our little town of Lewisburg.

"Don't go past five miles" came after another month of letting my legs adapt to the painful sensations coming from my feet after long sunset runs on state forest trails or country roads.

After a summer's trial of barefoot running, it was time to get the larger message: A 50-year-old body sometimes needs a cushioned landing.

GETTING LUCKY

"Are those them?" asked big Sam Jordan, reaching up to touch the stiff red polyester shorts hanging from a hook in my locker before a Randolph-Macon College football game.






The big defensive tackle was the last of a half dozen guys shuffling past to receive the blessing of the lucky shorts as we dressed for our first Old Dominion Athletic Conference game of the 1979 season against Washington & Lee University. 

"Yeah, ever since my first good high school game" I answered, taking down and stepping into the shorts as the first item of my pre-game uniform ritual.

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What my Yellow Jacket teammates didn't know was that I had found the red gym shorts on the girls sale rack at Efinger's after my first wretched high school game at halfback. I had run with the ball about twenty times in a tough loss to Manville, a nearby rival in the Mountain-Valley Conference. All the runs and subsequent hits by their twin Hynoski linebackers had made my jock rub my inner thighs raw. I needed an under layer, and the tight fitting shorts in Bound Brook High School colors were just the ticket, even if I did have to wait until no one else was around to sneak up to the counter for the purchase. 

In our next game at Ridge High School, the field had opened up as we moved the ball with power sweeps, short passes, and punt returns. Their all-conference halfback sought me out at midfield after the game.

"Keep it up, guy" he smiled, and I did just that as the new red shorts propelled us to three straight wins to finish the season even at 4-4-1.

Four years later my school colors had changed to yellow and black but the red short mojo remained, if stained and over-stretched.

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"How were the Yellow Jackets so successful in the rain and mud out there today?" asked the Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter after our big win.

"That's a real short story" I thought, pulling a clod from my facemask and taking off for a hot shower.