June 2011
1 post
Where was I?
OK, so I was off this thing for so long I forgot the email address I used for it and had to hack my way back in. And since it’s no longer clear what YEAR my last post was in (it was after my successful running of the 2010 Western States Endurance Run, not this week following the 2011 race) I thought I should get back on.
So, since that post, I ran a barefoot marathon (the next weekend), a...
Research project comparing injury rates between...
I’m taking time out from writing my race report from my successful running of the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run this last weekend in my VFFs to lend my support to a student research project looking to see if there are significant differences in injury rates between shod and unshod runners. Rebecca’s message about her project is below. I encourage you to contact her at ...
May 2010
2 posts
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Who has completed a 100 mile unicycle ride?
There’s a long running thread on the usenet newsgroup rec.sports.unicycling titled “Who has completed a 100 mile ride?” with the purpose of logging the answer to that question. As of today, 30 May 2010, the list includes 55 names:
Peter Bier David Stone Roger Davies Alan Chambers Steve Colligan Mark Wiggins Takayuki Koike (record holder 6hrs44min) Lars Clausen Ken Looi Floyd...
One month until Western States ... is it too early...
One month from now I should be relaxing in Placer High School’s field after a good hard run and not to mention long run of the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run. I’m feeling good about that. I’ve had some very encouraging long endurance events this Spring, not to mention my experience in running difficult trail 100s since 2006, that tell me I’m ready for this...
April 2010
1 post
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Northwest Barefoot/Minimalist Meetup
Join myself and other barefoot/minimalist runners on 24 April 2010 at the Energy Events Earth Day Run in Portland, OR. What better venue to arrive in numbers and run as we are made to run? There are 5K and 10K races, stroller friendly, dog friendly, and kids runs as well. I’ll be there with my rickshaw!
http://www.energyevents.com/EarthDayRun
March 2010
6 posts
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Barefoot at the 2nd Annual Fort Vancouver Runs
The combination of winning a free entry to the Fort Vancouver Runs from OregonLive.com on 28 March, and my daughter asking to go to another race for her 4th birthday this weekend, meant a wonderful barefoot morning with dad and daughters on Sunday. The girls are getting a little big for their rickshaw but I have the next generation ride in the works. I did the 15K but I think that on this race...
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One Day Run for Hunger was a great success!
I’m thankful for all of the support I had in the One Day Run for Hunger. With the help of a great many we raised $1045 for the Oregon Food Bank, and as chance would have it this matched exactly my goal of $10/mile as I logged 104.5 miles in those 24 hours. That was good enough to take home a plaque for 4th place. I had a great support crew, from my father who was there from setup to pack...
One day run for hunger is starting!
Follow the updates at @zekeboisei on Twitter or the Distance Minimally page on Facebook!
With all of your help we exceeded my fundraising goal of $1000 for the Oregon Food Bank, and am shooting for 100+ miles! Wish me luck!
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Distance uni cover story in Tail Winds magazine
And a barefoot running story to boot! Check out the great Tail Winds cover shot by Brad Jones at RB Jones Photography, and the articles on pages 10 and 11 about Max and my 109 mile ride of El Tour de Tucson and my record barefoot running of the Dean Karnazes Rock n Roll 50k.
Here’s the direct link
(For the record, we don’t know any circus songs and Vibram Five Fingers are not...
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Energy efficient walking
[Update 1: Minor text updates and added write up to this post instead of just linking to the original post]
Recently there was a study by Dr. David Carrier on the efficiency of different foot positions while walking, most notably a heel-strike vs a forefoot strike. The results showed that heel striking was more efficient than forefoot striking while walking. Many, particularly in the barefoot...
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"World Record" has a nice ring to it!
It turns out that January’s barefoot 50K at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Ultra 50K with a time of 4:14:52 was enough to earn the title of “World Record” for fastest barefoot 50K kept on Barefoot Ken Bob’s Running Barefoot site.
I have to admit, this didn’t even occur to me, even when I realized that my run had a place on his results page, until Ken Bob responded by...
February 2010
4 posts
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Hagg Lake 50K - a nice and muddy run
This was the last of my usual races where I took off my shoes. Last year, after I had long been running barefoot/minimalist at all of my other races, I just wasn’t sure about all that mud. My feet had been soaked in my Vibram Five Fingers at the Angeles Crest 100 Mile Endurance Run in September 2008, and blistered in a way that I didn’t think happened to me in VFFs. So in February...
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One day run without shoes to fight hunger
Beginning on the morning of Saturday 20 March 2010, I will be running for 24 hours at the Pacific Rim One Day Run raising money to fight hunger. I will be toeing the line barefoot, and will run the whole race without shoes. I hope to run 100 miles, and raise $10 per mile. Contributions will go to the Oregon Food Bank through Firstgiving.
Can you sponsor one or more miles to help me reach my...
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Interviewed in CNN's "Running Debate: Bare or in...
I have a small part in CNN’s take on the barefoot running debate, in between discussion of Dr. Lieberman’s article showing barefoot style running land with lower impact forces and Dr. Carrier’s article showing that our heel strike walking gait is more efficient than the forefoot strikes of other nearby species.
The quotes are pretty heavily paraphrased and out of context. I...
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Run Oregon article about me on The Oregonian's...
After exchanging a few emails with Kelly Johnson from the OregonLive.com’s Run Oregon blog, a nice write up about my development as a barefoot runner was posted this weekend. I think Kelly did about as good a job as any I’ve seen on discussing the topic, as well as my reasoning for and experience with it. Enjoy!
Interview with Oregon barefoot Runner Leif Rustvold
January 2010
1 post
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Barefoot at the Rock 'n' Roll Ultra 50K in Phoenix
Add to the list of forthcoming race reports this weekend’s Inaugural Dean Karnazes Rock ‘n’ Roll Ultra 50K, part of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona Marathon events. Briefly, it was a well planned and executed 50K, even if it was a bit odd to do our extra 4.85 miles at the start and then line up with the other runners for the regular marathon start. It was nice to have...
December 2009
3 posts
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Photos from November's 109 Mile El Tour de Tucson...
The race report from November’s El Tour de Tucson is in the works, but I can’t resist passing along some photos from the event taken by Brad Jones at RB Jones Photography. Expect to see his work documenting our ride in an upcoming issue of Tailwinds magazine!
http://rbjonesphotography.zenfolio.com/unigallery
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Race Report: 2009 ORRC Turkey Trot
On Thanksgiving 2009, my family went to the Portland Zoo for our third three-generation running and walking of the Turkey Trot. Below you can see me, ready with the rickshaw, and my father saying some last words to my girls before we took off running. Despite the look in the picture, they actually can see out with the rain cover on the chariot!
And, of course, I ran the 4 mile fun-run...
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Guest blogger Max Taint: The Tequila 50
A ride report from my distance unicycle riding partner, Max Taint, about our 24 October training ride for El Tour de Tucson. He sent it to me way back on 28 October:
Leif is one of my few Unicycle Bastard friends (www.unicyclebastards.com) interested in distance unicycling and we have been training for and riding in centuries for a couple of years now. Our next long ride is the Tour De Tucson...
October 2009
8 posts
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“Hope you got your flu shot!”
– the most baffling response I got about running yesterday’s race barefoot
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What's next?
I’ve recovered from my “feats of the feet” back to back minimalist/barefoot adventures in late September and early October. I still have my final reflections on those runs as a pair that I’m working on, part 4 in my 4 part series, but it’s a hard one for me.
Fall is here in earnest. My wife suggested doing the Run Like Hell event here in Portland. It seemed like a...
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An amazing example of going the distance with less
Most of the challenges described here on Distance Minimally involve chosen constraints, deciding to make do without gear that most endurance athletes consider essential to their sport. This week, in what must be the Distance Minimally Performance Of The Year, Amy Palmiero-Winters was the women’s winner of the Heartland 100 Mile Endurance Run. A below-the-knee amputee, she finished with a...
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Barefoot at the Portland Marathon
This is part three in a four part report on my recent barefoot/minimalist running. The first part detailed my unshod journey - how I took off my shoes. The second part was a detailed race report of the “Hundred in the Hood” in Vibrams, in which I ran the PCT Ultra 100 Mile Endurance Run wearing Vibram Five Fingers. This post provides a detailed race report of my barefoot running of...
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Barefoot Portland Marathon - the short report
I’ve got my race report all written from my first barefoot marathon, the Portland Marathon on 4 October 2009. I’ve just been waiting for some pictures to add to the final posting.
The brief report is that I ran the marathon barefoot with success and finished in 4:10. I feel great about the accomplishment. This is not only because running a marathon barefoot reaches such a momentous...
9 tags
"Hundred in the 'Hood" in Vibram Five Fingers,...
I’ve never been good at writing race reports. Maybe I’d be better at an interpretive dance, or a song in the style of Ewok Celebration that combines a sort of speaking in tongues with story telling and impersonation with a driving beat. Alas, I’m really no good at those either but now I have two momentous runs backlogged that I’ve promised I would document. In a way they...
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Stories from the unicycle commute
One from the archives. On 1 July 2008 Donald on BikePortland.org posted the following story about our crossing paths on that Tuesday’s commute:
Unicycles Rule!
This evening, I was running late. I was lugging my laptop in a pannier, but my 80s Raleigh Comp GS was still in fighting form, tires just topped off to 110 and fresh lube on the drivetrain. I’ve had a good winter of...
11 tags
My unshod journey - how I took off my shoes
I keep finding myself writing a history of my barefoot/minimalist running while working on the race report for last weekend’s “Hundred in the ‘Hood” PCT100. It seems that story needs to be told first. Some of it was told in my recent interview with Aaron from Transcend Bodywork. Some I haven’t shared before. Here it is.
I tried my first jogs without shoes in...
September 2009
9 posts
WatchWorking on my PCT100 race report, it’s always a challenge for me to take the memories of 100+ miles on the trail and reflect them in words. For now, here’s a short video shot by Tomas who blogs at The Fit Human. He’s another minimalist runner, and a crew member extraordinaire who joined me on the trail for a leg of the race. Thanks Tomas!
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Birthday Shoes article about me and Distance... →
Justin over at Birthday Shoes has written a nice article on my minimalist adventures and introducing his readers to Distance Minimally. It’s a nice writeup, if I may say so myself. Thanks Justin!
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The Oregonian article on our 2009 Reach the Beach... →
A great article by Jim Moore about our 2009 Reach the Beach unicycle century ride, titled “One Wheel, 100 Miles — Ow! That’s Gotta Hurt”. It was published in The Oregonian on 20 June 2009. A nice Father’s Day surprise, I woke up to a message from a friend on my Facebook wall simply saying “I saw the article - you’re awesome!” Unfortunately...
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Christian Science Monitor article on our 2009... →
An article by Elizabeth Moore about our 2009 Reach the Beach unicycle century ride.
http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/06/10/united-states-one-wheeled-wonders/
Distance: 102 miles
Minimally: 1 wheel
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Out and About with Drew Carney on KGW →
Ahead of our 2009 Reach the Beach ride, our group of 4 distance unicyclists appeared on KGW’s morning news in the “Out and About” segment with Drew Carney throughout the newscast.
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First run in the new Vibram Five Finger KSO Trek
I sent this out Sunday to some of the barefoot/minimalist running mailing lists I am on. I share it here as a fitting first post on my blog about going the distance minimally:
I did my ~10 mile run today wearing my new Treks. A wandering 2 hours on the network of trails in the Marquam Nature Park in Portland, Oregon. Full of hills, mud, rocks, lots of single track trail, and one stretch of...