Do my lower leg muscles feel stronger as a result of having trained in minimal footwear? Absolutely. Every step felt far more solid than in past races. I noticed I felt particularly comfortable on the downhill portion of the race. Steep downhills sometimes cause me to feel slightly out of control. This was not the case on Monday.

I did notice in the last mile that my form started to fall apart, which is a result of a weak upper body. My goal this summer is to do a little more strength training: core work and some upper body work. Recently I’ve read a few articles that stress the importance of doing deadlifts. One of my favorite books, “Healthy Intelligent Training” by Keith Livingstone, argues that a runner can address up to 90% of his running muscles using the deadlift. Low repetitions with heavy weight. Who would have guessed?

Some coaches suggest doing these drills when you’re fresh at the beginning of a workout and others argue that it’s just as good to do them at the end of an easy run. Regardless, most coaches will agree that you don’t want run them when you’re overly tired because otherwise the whole point is lost.

Sadly, when I’m on my own, I often end up skipping this part of my workout. When I’m coaching, though, I rarely miss an opportunity to focus on developing good leg turnover, especially for young runners who are still learning the basics of how to run.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, running is a learned skill. Sure, some runners come by perfect form naturally, but most don’t.

For a race as short as five miles I really can see the importance of getting in speed work and ample anaerobic threshold (AT) workouts. I’m doing more of those now with the high school track team. We did three 1-mile repeats yesterday at about 6:20 pace, with close to 1:00 rest between each (jogging rest). After a decent base, I find AT work really helps to bring times down, especially when mixed with workouts that stress efficiency. And we haven’t done anything that I’d put into the hard “interval” category yet.

One of the most significant differences between hard intervals and threshold work is that hard intervals require plenty of rest. The priority is efficiency and coordination, with the overall development of aerobic fitness playing second fiddle for the day.

When the boys were done, I did one set with the girls, so I did five sets in all. I ran a 1.5 mile warm-up before and a 1.5 cool-down after, which brought me to 8 miles for the day.

I was surprised about how good I felt. One thing in particular I noticed was how well my feet turned over and how easy it was to keep proper cadence. I believe improvement in this area comes, in part, from doing all my workouts for the last three weeks in minimal shoes that force me to get off my heels.

The verdict is still out about whether or not I’ll get some peculiar injury as a result of making such a radical shift in footwear. (Well, it’s not too radical or abrupt of a shift. I trained all winter on the treadmill on the same shoes, but treadmill running is different from running on streets and sidewalks.)

So far, though, I like how I feel. It seems as though my stride is becoming more efficient.

According to Lieberman, the running shoes we wear these days encourage us to land on our heels first. The initial heel strike sends a great deal of stress up the leg and into the body. For barefoot runners, there is less of this stress…though there is more stress on tendons and muscles in the lower leg, especially for those who were formerly heel strikers.

But once the proper muscles are developed, it would make sense that landing on one’s forefoot would yield less overall stress. For one, because we’ve been running barefoot for millions of years and this is how we’re designed to run. And two, by displacing downward energy slowly (forefoot to heel) there is less of sudden impact when our feet hit the ground.

Is it better to keep rolling when you jump off the train or better to stop suddenly? If you stop suddenly, you’ll break your legs. If you keep rolling, you’re spreading out that momentum and giving yourself a chance to survive.

The same is true for running. A heel strike is much more like jumping off the train suddenly while a forefoot strike is more like rolling a bit before coming to a stop.

As a preventative measure for shin splints, the Penn State coach had his kids run on grass from time to time. This makes perfect sense because shin splints are caused by over-functioning shoes replacing the work that should be done by feet and muscles in the lower leg. The form closest to the form we should use when we run in shoes, is the form we have when we run without them.

What he has, from years of running barefoot as a young child in Ethiopia, are muscles in his lower leg that actually allow him to use his pronation to absorb shock, which is why pronation is good, not bad. What’s bad is having weak lower leg muscles — when our running shoes do to much work for us.

In my mind, this video is revolutionary. Surely, pronation or overpronation is not a defect, but an asset.