Simplicity
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 5:00AM 
I've been enjoying a book on running. Really, it's more exciting that it sounds. It's called Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. It includes this interesting section:
Running shoes may be the most destructive force to ever hit the human foot...Runners wearing top-of-the-line shoes are 123 percent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap shoes, according to a study but Bernard Marti, M.D., a preventative-medicine specialist at Switzerland's University of Bern...Runners in shoes that cost more than $95 were more than twice as likely to get hurt as runners in shoes that cost less than $40...
What a joke: for double the price, you get double the pain.
There go my plans to buy a pair of these.
I couldn't help but make a connection to something I read in the Institutes yesterday:
Paul's expressions, that he was "made unto us wisdom," (1 Cor. 1:30), and elsewhere, that in him "are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," (Col. 2:3), have a somewhat different meaning, namely, that out of him there is nothing worth knowing, and that those who, by faith, apprehend his true character, possess the boundless immensity of heavenly blessings. For which reason, he elsewhere says, "I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified," (1 Cor. 2:2). And most justly: for it is unlawful to go beyond the simplicity of the Gospel.
Okay, maybe only I made the connection. Sometimes you don't need to go beyond the simple, whether you're talking about running shoes or the simplicity of the Gospel. There is more there than meets the eye. To go beyond, you end up with much less at a much greater cost.
Reader Comments (4)
I showed this blog to my wife hoping to convince her that we should buy cheap running shoes, but then she pointed something out to me.Serious runners are much more likely to buy the more expensive running shoes. So, of course they're more likely to get injured since they run a lot more.Does the book say anything about that?
The study I mentioned was conducted on 4,358 runners in the Bern Grand-Prix, a 9.6 mile race. All of them were serious runners.He quotes others who have studied the issue as well - Dr. Daniel Lieberman, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard, and Dr. Craig Richards at the University of Newcastle in Australia, who found there is no evidence that running shoes make you less prone to injury. The evidence seems pretty strong. It would be interesting to read the counter-arguments somewhere.
okay cool, thanks!
All I can say is that if you think ~$100 for shoes is bad, stay well away from cycling!