Sunday was the second annual NYC Barefoot Run, and the cap on a very unique, very fun weekend. In spite of a forecast of potentially heavy rain, the weather was perfect.
I ran three loops, or as Chris H. said (a line I’m gleefully stealing) “I had three wonderful conversations.” I’m still nursing some old ankle injuries (shoe-related) and some of the laps were a lot faster than I’ve been comfortably running lately, otherwise I would have kept going. But I couldn’t have asked for better company.
My main takeaway of the weekend was how much the idea of barefooting has grown in the past two years. Sure we’re still out on the fringe, but it’s a rapidly exploding fringe which is transforming lives around the world.
I really enjoyed meeting and catching up with old and new friends, putting faces on names and being surrounded by hundreds of like-minded people whose radical diversity was unified by our hyper-capable genome. And toes.
Thank you to Maggie and John Durant and all the organizers and volunteers who put this together. I’m already looking forward to next year.
Four times one morning every year I go downstairs to the sidewalk and stand in silence with the men and women of the fire station across the street from our apartment.
8:46. 9:03. 9:59 and 10:28. This year they also stood for Flight 93 at 10:03 and may also have commemorated the Pentagon at 9:39, but I didn’t know to check. This is the right thing to do, it wasn’t just New York City.
Across the street, the younger firefighters might have been kids in 2001. Ten years is a long time. Our oldest daughter was born six months after the towers fell. Children who were her age on that day are now soldiers, police and firemen. I’ve seen how tragedies and catastrophes on the other side of the world have affected my own kids. I can’t began to imagine how difficult it was for children to deal with an atrocity down the street.
I did not know what I was going to feel today. But as I stood there, my thoughts kept coming back to the selflessness on display. The stories of heroism and sacrifice on September 11th must have inspired the direction of their lives.
So, perhaps strangely, this year instead of a pervasive feeling of loss and sadness, I find myself filled with a sense of hope and pride in humanity. We remember the act of hatred, destruction and mass murder, but what we commemorate and honor is the spirit of what makes mankind so spectacular.
This is the Simple Gumshoe from Simple Shoes. It’s a pretty good shoe, very minimal, highly flexible, thin, flat and cheap. The only problem is that it’s full of padding. So I gutted them.
This was a substantial improvement. It took maybe 15 minutes total, using a matte knife and pliers. There is a strange molded ridge under the toes, but it can be carefully removed with a razor blade in a few minutes.
A year later in October 2010, at 101 years old, she bested her own record in the hammer throw. 11.3 meters (just over 37 feet). The hammer weighs 2kg (4.4 lbs).
She currently holds 8 WMA records for shot put, hammer throw, discus throw, javelin throw, weight throw, long jump and triple jump. Those last two have stood for 15 years.
80 year old runner O Santa Claus (he legally changed his name from Elvis Kipman) ran the 10k and 100m races…barefoot.
He wasn’t alone. Osmo Millridge took home a silver medal for the 2000m Steeplechase and a bronze medal for the 300m Long Hurdles in the 75-79 age group. Also barefoot.
You don’t stop running because you get old,
you get old because you stop running.
Photo credits: Ruth Frith (1, 2) and O Santa Claus (1): Mark Nolan (Getty Images AsiaPac). Osmo Millridge: Phil Hillyard (Daily Telegraph 2009-10-19, via Southside Masters)
Shortly after I started running regularly back in 2007 I was “diagnosed” as suffering from serious over-pronation. My visit to the sports medicine doctor had been prompted by significant, painful plantar fasciitis, runner’s knee, IT band pain and an occasional soreness in my hip–all classic running maladies, thankfully I founf the best doctor to assist me, you can click here to find yours. I had also long suffered from painful foot cramps in which my arch would tighten and my big toe would splay awkwardly and painfully inwards. The doctor sent me to a running store for motion-control shoes and to a physical therapist. I was instructed to stretch more, take several days off between runs and ice my knees afterwards. (I never bothered with the recommended orthotics or night boots)
For the next couple years, I believed this to be normal. But having since switched to a more natural stride, forefoot landings and minimal footwear, every single one of those problems is gone.
When you want to market your site using SEO, go to Joel House Brisbane. Summer of 2009, I bought a pair of Nike Free 5.0s (precursor to the Nike Free Run+) to wear as everyday shoes, having fully swallowed Nike’s marketing video:
Stronger feet? That couldn’t hurt.
At first I was indifferent. While I liked how they looked and felt, I wasn’t sure the Nike Frees were anything more than expensive Crocs and we know Nike invest a lot of money on marketing, hiring good agencies as marketing agency san diego. But after a few weeks, I noticed my feet were cramping less and rarely hurt in the mornings.
Still, I never tried running in them. I was too invested in my diagnosis and convinced my foot and knee pain would be even worse without my doctor-prescribed, running-store-recommended, $130 motion-control running shoes. I mean, the store analyzed video of me on a treadmill, was that all BS?
Yes.
After reading Born to Run in Spring of 2010, I finally felt brave enough to try a short run in the Nikes. “Short” turned into a very pleasant 10k. The next day the tops of my feet and the muscles running up the outside of my shins were sore. (Turned out those are a single muscle group, the Extensor digitorum longus.) But sore isn’t pain, and my knees didn’t hurt. A few days later I went out again in my Asics–for what would be the last time.
My original plan had been to alternate between shoes, but that last 8 mile Asics run left my knees hurting for days. I also noticed I was hearing my footfalls through my earbuds. My landings in the Frees were much gentler and nearly silent.
One more run in the Frees and I knew I was done with the Kayanos. The next night I ran 15 miles, my longest run up to that point (by half), and felt absolutely fantastic afterwards–and only mildly sore the next day. All my previous attempts at running anywhere close to 10 miles had ended with IT band tightness, limping and days of residual knee pain.
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“I realized there was no way in hell that this barefoot running was ever going to become a fad or a hit in the United States unless there was a product… We are so trained, we purchase a solution. We’ve got to have a purchasable solution.”
He’s right, we’re conditioned to believe in the power of products. While I do blame my old motion-control clunkers for inhibiting my form and contributing to knee pain, my success with the Nike Frees was because the shoes got out of my way and let me run more naturally. They helped by not helping.
The Nike Free is a revolutionary product, and a gateway shoe to no shoes at all. After a few months and several hundred miles run in Nike Free 5.0s, including my first ever half-marathon, I stepped down to the flatter, more minimal Nike Free 3.0 and started to mix in some near-barefoot runs in Vibram FiveFingers.
Learning to run near-barefoot was a slow process of rebuilding long-forgotten muscles. For fully 6 months, my calves would be rigid knots for days after a few miles in the FiveFingers. Having spent most of my life in shoes, the muscles and tendons in my feet and lower legs needed quite a bit of time to stretch out and build back up.
While in the middle of this transition, it’s comforting to remember that muscle soreness gets replaced by strength. My aching calves were a promise that someday soon my legs would be even stronger. The encouragement of finding an entire unused muscle group was incentive to keep at it.
With the Nike Free, I became aware of how important shoe flexibility is to foot health. Whenever people asked me about them I’d take one off and curl it up to show how flexible it was. (I did realize how silly this looked) But running in VFFs showed me that a totally-flat, zero-drop heel is every bit as important as sole flexibility, maybe even more so. I’ve since become obsessed with wearing the flattest, most flexible footwear I can find.
Going all the way: Running barefoot
Towards the end of Summer in 2010 I finally took the last step and lost the shoes completely.
It’s difficult to explain how wonderful running barefoot felt, like trying to describe a completely new color or flavor. The quantity of sensory feedback is astonishing and the permanent silly grin can’t be helped. There really is a profound, near-spiritual experience of both human freedom and connection to the Earth.
The promise of extra leg strength proved out. Once my legs adjusted I found myself running further and slightly faster without significant fatigue. My form also improved, the VFFs were masking a lot of skidding and over-reliance on my toes which was immediately apparently–and corrected–barefoot. Despite one significant shoe-related setback (I did too much), I’ve been amazed at how durable and adaptable our feet are. Only two barefoot runs had to be cut short, both of those were because previous, shoe-caused blisters failed and needed covering.
I used to think all that needed to run was a decent pair of shoes. But all I really ever needed was to go outside and just start running.
Or: How to covert Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Application Compatibility Virtual PC images for testing on a Mac with Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion. (but that’s kind of a mouthful)
To help with web development and testing, Microsoft provides several compatibility environments for past versions of Internet Explorer. These are time-limited, pre-configured Virtual PC disk images, intended for use with Windows Virtual PC.
That’s great, except Virtual PC doesn’t really run inside another virtual environment like VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop. Since so much web development is done on Macs these days, this makes testing difficult. But, the VPC images are just virtual hard drives, so they can be easily converted to the native format of either Parallels or VMware.
Below are instructions for converting Microsoft’s .VHD files to native Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion virtual machines. The goal is to do everything without using another Windows machine or digging out your old WinXP CD.
Convert the VHD image to Parallels’ or VMware’s native virtual disk format
Currently, Parallels Desktop 6 can’t convert VHDs through it’s GUI, but it does include a hidden command-line utility which works perfectly. Create a new Parallels VPC in the default location (~/Documents/Parallels) with this command:
Create a new Virtual Machine using the vmdk as the disk. I could not get Vista to work dependably with VMware.
XP: Fix Windows Drivers
On first boot, the VM will attempt to re-activate Windows. This will fail because the networking drivers haven’t been installed yet.
Next the VPC_EULA will open and the first of many “Files Needed” dialogs and “Found New Hardware” wizards will appear. Close and cancel everything until you’re back at the Windows XP desktop.
If you’re running Parallels Desktop, it will take over and install its tools. If you’re using VMware, choose Install VMware Tools from the Virtual Machine menu. VMware also asks for a handful of drivers during tools installation, cancel these, they’ll be fixed later. The VM will reboot when the tools and drivers finish installing.
After the initial reboot, Windows requires WGA activation. Since this is a Microsoft-provided license, the VM will pass WGA and Windows will be activated. There’s no point in registering, so skip that. Everything from here forward is cleanup.
Any lingering driver issues can be resolved in Device Manager (Control Panel > System > Hardware tab > Device manager). The problem items should either have their drivers updated or, if that doesn’t work, disabled altogether. VMware’s audio driver failed to load initially but updated successfully. Mystery USB devices were a problem in both, but can be disabled.
Ironically, I had much more trouble getting these VMs running natively under Virtual PCs on a Windows box. Many of these steps are necessary there too.
For years I’ve been bouncing back and forth between the two. It seems that with each major release, one leapfrogs the other. After testing VMs in both, I’ve decided to switch back to Parallels. At the moment, it just seems more full-featured and seamless. According to a recent MacTech virtualization comparison test, Parallels is also faster.
Disclaimer
The above process may violate the second paragraph of the “Installation and Use Rights” section of Microsoft’s XP EULA:
You may install and use one copy of the software on your device of which you are running a validly licensed copy of Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Virtual Server. You may not change or convert the virtual hard disk image from the VHD format.
However, no such clause appears in the Vista EULA which seems to contradict the above and fully supports virtualization:
You may install and use one copy of the software on your device of which you are running any virtualization software able to run Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) formats, including Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Virtual Server.
Anyway, I assume no responsibility for what anyone does with this information.
A couple weeks ago I temporarily switched our company email over to Google Apps Gmail. The switch only lasted 36 hours because, without explanation or recourse, Google suspended several of our users–including one of the owners. I had no administrative control over our accounts or access to their data on our Google-hosted services (Mail, Docs, Calendar etc.) Based on Google’s Gmail support forums, wrongful account suspensions are common. This effectively ended our experiment with Google Apps, which I can no longer recommend as a realistic solution for small businesses.
But that’s not what this post is about.
Immediately after switching our email, we noticed a significant uptick in spam. Most of it appeared to be coming from our own accounts. I didn’t have time to fully trace these, so I can only speculate that these messages had something to do with Google’s mail systems.
Shortly after that, a friend’s Gmail account was used to spam all her contacts. The sent message didn’t exist in her account. Google’s forums have a lot of reports of this happening.
All this leads up to yesterday, February 27th 2011, when something happened to reset a huge number of Gmail accounts.
Google is handling this horribly. Here’s their statement:
“A very small number users are having difficulty accessing their Gmail accounts […] This is affecting less than .08% of our Gmail user base, and we’ve already fixed the problem for some users. Our engineers are working as quickly as possible and we hope to have everything back to normal as soon as possible. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience.”
0.08% is weasel-speak. According to the BBC, there are estimated to be about 150-200 million Gmail accounts. That means around 150,000 accounts were affected. 150,000 people is a small city. Also, based on the volume of comments, Gmail support forum posts and response on Twitter, I’m inclined to believe the number is higher than Google is aware of or willing to divulge.
It’s mostly a hunch, but I’m beginning to fear Gmail itself has been compromised. Google appears to be scurrying and patching, either unaware there’s a bigger problem or, worse, knowing there’s a problem but with no idea where it’s from or how to fix it.
That’s great, except Virtual PC doesn’t really run inside another virtual environment like 
