McDougall will also be the featured speaker Friday night at the ING Hartford Marathon's pre-race pasta party at Bushnell Park.
A recent question-and-answer session with him:
Q. How has the book changed your life?
A. "It wasn't the book so much as the experience that changed things dramatically. Just being able to run again. It sounds trivial — some people would say that it's just another way of working out. But it changed every aspect of my life. Five years ago, I was a semi-overweight, grouchy, overeating, overworked journalist. Almost every one of those things has changed. I'm 40 pounds lighter.
"I had a lot of trouble writing the book. I was trying to fold four different books into one. I wrote three drafts that I shredded. I spent two years just writing. Any time I was jammed, I would go for a run and the answer would always come. It became a fool-proof mechanism for solving writing problems. Getting the use of my legs back was the major change."
Q. Were you surprised by the reaction it received?
A. "Not really. Only because I knew from my own experience, every runner will mention one of two things — shoes or injuries — when you talk to them. As I was writing the book I was thinking, 'If I can just make this coherent, I can't see how every runner wouldn't be interested.'"
Q. How much do you run per week and where do you like to run?
A. "I run 50-60 miles a week. There are some nice trails in Lancaster, Pa., where I live."
Q. Do you have a favorite race?
A. "I race rarely. It seems like barefoot, minimalist runners start to lose interest in racing. You become more infatuated with running form and running properly. … But my favorite race is the Conestoga 10-mile trail race. No one has ever broken nine minutes a mile on the course. I finished [this year] five minutes faster than I did in 2006."
Q. Barefoot or minimalist, what are you most comfortable with?
A. "I try to go barefoot. I'm a bad backslider. I'm always on the verge of going back to bad form. I try to go barefoot as much as possible. Sometimes I'll use the [Vibram] Five Fingers, if I'm on crushed stone or gravel. If I'm on a gnarly trail, I'll use cross country racing shoes. I'm looking for protection, not correction."
Q. The barefoot movement seems to be growing but when you go to local races or even big marathons, you still don't see that many barefoot runners. Why do you think that is?
A. "The goal is not to run barefoot. The goal is to run properly. People ask me, 'How come top marathoners aren't running barefoot?' These are elite athletes — why would they risk stepping on an acorn and getting hurt? I'm going to run the New York City Marathon and I'm debating what to wear. You add protection as necessary. It's 26 miles on city streets. The smart move is if you don't know what you're going to encounter, wear some protection.
"The other part is the authorities in the sport — the running magazines, the podiatrists, the sports medicine doctors, the physical therapists — they haven't embraced this [barefoot philosophy]. They're still preaching the old idea that you can buy your way out of trouble instead of learning your way out of trouble."
Q. What's the best story you've heard about someone switching to barefoot running and benefiting from it?
A. "Dr. Irene Davis, she's now at Harvard. She is both professor and a physical therapist and she came from the orthotics/cushioned shoe paradigm. She read the book, she and Dr. [Daniel] Lieberman [a Harvard professor of human evolutionary biology who appears in Born to Run] did some research together and now she and her husband are both barefoot runners. She spent 30 years prescribing orthotics and is now running barefoot herself."
Q. What's your advice for runners who want to switch from shoes to barefoot?
via courant
A. "The best time to transition is after a race, like if you're running the marathon this weekend. When you cut back your miles, that's perfect. You're sore and tender on Monday, you go out and jog a half mile, just do it barefoot. Your body doesn't want you to run more. Listen to what your feet are telling you. If your feet are sore, they're sore for a reason, they're telling you to stop."
Q. Do you still keep in touch with the people in the book — Barefoot Ted and Scott Jurek and Jen and Billy?
A. "I saw Barefoot Ted in Colorado at [the] Leadville [100]. I paced him for the last 13 miles. He talked non-stop. He ran the whole thing in a pair of homemade sandals."
Q. What are your future plans?
A. "I'm working on another book now, hoping to have done by next summer. I'm trying not to talk about it yet."
Q. Is it about running?
A. "Not really. There are some elements of it."