I run for a club called Ealing Eagles in London , United Kingdom, and occasionally contribute articles to the club website . Yesterday I quoted your 15th April 2009 Daily Mail article "The painful truth about running shoes" on our club's Facebook forum and was surprised to see that you had misquoted a source. Having read your book "Born to Run" several times and been enthralled by its content, I was shocked when a co-runner pointed out your use of the 1989 cohort study by Dr Marti blatantly contradicted the study's own findings.

Your article suggests that Dr Marti's survey points towards the pricey shoes as the main cause of injury: "It wasn't even body weight or a history of previous injury, it was the shoe". But when my co-runner Afzal Sohaib cited the source (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=marti+b+running+shoes), it actually stated the following:"Injuries were not significantly related to race running speed, training surface, characteristics of running shoes, or relative weight. Achillodynia and calf muscle symptoms were the two most common overuse injuries and occurred significantly more often among older runners with increased weekly mileage. We conclude that jogging injuries are frequent, that the number of firmly established etiologic factors is low, and that, in recommending jogging, moderation should be the watchword."

I am an avid barefoot practitioner, and relied on your article as a source to encourage runners in my club to try it out. I'd love to think Dr Marti's survey arrived at the conclusions you did, but I can't see where you got it from. If anything, the study positively concludes that running shoes had nothing to do with the injuries.

Here's me hoping this is an oversight or that you've got some more evidence to back this up so I can refer more Ealing Eagles to your writing. It's hard enough to get people to take barefoot running seriously without being shown up like this!

Yours,

David Kelly (aka Flatfoot Dave)

On the epidemiology of running injur... [Am J Sports Med. 1988 May-Jun] - PubMed - NCBI

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
PubMed comprises more than 21 million citations for biomedical literature from M...

Flatfoot Dave Dear Mr McDougall,

Thank you for your quick response. I wish I had access to the full study to be able to access the part you mention. I suppose that's where us common mortals rely on sports writers such as yourself (if that's the right term) to translate it for them. I take it you saw why it looked like you had misquoted the source based on the abstract.

I'm sure Afzal will be as pleased as I initially was to see that he now stands corrected himself!

I look forward to your next publication on ultrarunning and the barefoot/minimalist running movement. It has definitely raised eyebrows in our club, and with any luck, will take off in the UK now that Runnersworld UK has featured some articles showing the science behind its benefits. 

Although there are barefoot running groups in the UK, I'm not aware of any mass participation barefoot running events like you have written about in New York. 

Time to make a trip across the pond?

Yours,

David Kelly (aka Flatfoot Dave)