of my other campus visits.

I'm telling you guys have it made when it comes to food.

So thank you Google for a terrific lunch.

Those of you can see me closely see that I'm sporting a black eye today.

I have two Siberian huskies who I'm trying to train to not want to chase squirrels.

And it's not easy to do because something runs quickly by you -- I run a lot in Volunteer

Park -- and you have two dogs that I often run with a tether on, so I'm not holding them

and I'm like running with them.

And usually, we're in like this really fluid, moving great together.

And I can use voice commands and I can -- I kind of have various ways to keep them

doing -- we're all kind of a pack and I'm sort of the alpha, at least that's what I'm

hoping.

And some squirrels or a squirrel went by in a somewhat narrow path and suddenly I found

myself in a branch and stopping.

A branch suddenly decided to stop me.

So I have a black eye and a hurt shoulder but other than that I think I'm okay.

I'm good to go.

I actually did this the day before -- I gave a talk last week at the Pacific Lutheran University's

-- they had a international symposium on sport and recreation.

And I didn't realize I was getting a black eye.

I guess it -- it happened the day before and I guess -- well, I guess some of you have

had black eyes sometimes.

I guess it doesn't just like suddenly you have a black eye.

So I was, like, didn't really know I had a black eye, but everybody was looking at me

so funny.

I thought just like, gee, I guess I must look really funny.

I mean, that's probably true, too, but nonetheless that's the story on that.

Anyway, I don't know how many of you know me from reading the book 'Born to Run' or

having checked out my blog, Barefoot Ted's Adventures, but I'll tell you it's been an

incredible experience to have become sort of a person who my own personal journey to

find a way to run joyfully to sort of do things that I sort of didn't think I was ever going

to be able to do, and then sort of put my mind to it.

And start really investigating what it means to be able to run and whether or not this

is something I was going to be able to do in my life for longer than an hour without

pain led to me where I am talking to you today.

And the story goes like this: When I was a younger person, I remember there was a --

my family ran the Santa Monica Pier carousel in Santa Monica.

I'm kind of from a carousel family, if you can imagine that.

But the son of Alan Cranston, who was a famous California senator, was having his 40th birthday

party at the carousel, and he was going to run his first marathon.

And I thought, my goodness, 40-year old running a marathon.

You know, this is his first marathon.

I was just so intrigued that somebody that old -- I think I was 20 at the time -- would

ever even be able to do that.

And I got to know him and I was sort of intrigued.

And he really had a successful run, and he was talking about how great it was and kind

of sharing with me his experience as a runner.

And I -- in the back of my mind, I sort of filed something there that, perhaps when I

was going to be turning 40, I think that I might try to make that attempt at a marathon.

So anyway, about seven years ago, my 40th birthday was coming – was going to be coming

up, and I thought, well, now's the time to give it a try.

So I'd done a little running here and there.

I ran, you know, some in high school and while I was -- I remember the first thing I did

after graduating from UC Berkley, I was studying Japanese and Rhetoric -- the first thing I

did after I got out was I started running again.

And I thought -- it seemed so enjoyable to suddenly start being able to put energy into

something that was so pure and -- but I could never, I really could never get more than

a hour where I would be in so much pain, basically.

And I tried different shoes, I tried all kinds of different things.

And I sort of gave it up for awhile and went to bicycling.

It's a very, very common story.

And anyway, my 40th birthday was looming about seven years ago, and I decided, well, I'm

going to make one more effort to crack this nut of long distance running.

There's got to be now some technological solution to this problem, and so I started Googling

"lowest impact shoe" and various things.

And I came up with a great find.

And it's -- it's a company out of Switzerland called Kangoo Jumps – I believe is the name

-- or Kangoo Boots and they literally make a boot-like footwear that has a, kind of like

a leaf spring built into it.

And you put these on and you can literally bounce.

I mean you can bounce around the -- and I thought yes.

And they had like a, you know, they had sort of testimonials and various people who had

tried, you know, people that had various problems with impact and they had gotten these shoes.

And I think they had evidence showing that this shoe was the most impact-resisting shoe

on the market.

And so it was like, right on.

And I -- right away e-mailed them and I -- they told me, oh, it's a great timing.

We're having this newest version of the shoe coming out that's even got more spring.

And I was going to have to like wait like a month.

I was just -- whenever you have to wait for something it's just like building up the intensity

of how wonderful it's going to be.

And I was just imagining myself sort of bouncing through the foothills and just -- I was going

to be coming a living embodiment of Tigger.

I had like -- I'm built so strong, I've got strong legs and I'm strong.

And I thought if with regular running shoes I could do an hour without pain, and for me

I was always assuming that marathon runners and long distance runners, those guys it's

all about enduring pain.

That's what I assumed, based on my experience.

So I thought if I could go on hour with the best running shoes, I figured I'm going to

be able to do like two hours like right away, like first day.

So anyway, long story short my Kangoo Jumps came and I put my Kangoo Jumps on, so damn

excited and I was bouncing around the yard.

And instead of one hour where I was in my case kind of lower back pain, 15 minutes later,

I'm feeling the same problems, the tightness in the legs and the various other things.

And I was just like, oh my gosh, you know.

It was just like you got to be kidding me.

I took the dial, turned to 11, 11 didn't work.

And I don't know about you guys but I'm one of these kind of problem solvers that I like

to like -- I like to test the extremes.

Even on some computer coding stuff I do, I'm like go over let's do this oh,crap that's

all screwed up.

Go over here, don't do this.

Oh, that's kind of screwed up.

And somewhere in the middle, I find a solution.

So 11 didn't work.

I had the best, most impact-resisting shoe in the world, 15 minutes later, ain't going

to be going anywhere soon.

And thankfully the kind of prototypes I had broke, I got to send them back.

They were rather expensive and, well, anyway, I found myself kind of confronted with a dead

end.

And I didn't right away think about barefooting, but I had been doing a lot of barefooting

already.

I'd been doing some barefoot hiking, and so I thought maybe I'm just going to be a hiker.

Maybe I'll be a barefoot hiker.

So I Googled "barefoot hiking," and well of course, there are barefoot hikers in the world.

And there are barefoot hikers forums and there are barefoot hiker events.

So I'm looking at all this barefoot hiking stuff, and I'm thinking that's cool I've been

doing that a lot.

And I think it's actually been very beneficial to me to have had that background before I

go further in the story.

But nonetheless, while I was looking at the barefoot hiking website, there was a little

link down at the bottom to barefoot running.

And before I clicked that, or about at the same moment that I clicked that link over,

and it happened to be a link over to -- the famous barefooter named Barefoot Ken Bob,

this bearded, long-haired guy that works over at Cal State Long Beach in Southern California

who had had a website sort of on barefoot running for several years.

Before I clicked on that, sort of like a flood of memories of various things in my own experience

that made me remember that indeed there were or had been perhaps in my mind at the moment

biomechanically perfect individuals in this world who had been able to achieve great things

barefooting.

I'd remembered Zola Budd, if any of you are older than me or about the same age, you probably

have remembered or heard about her, an Olympic athlete runner.

But I also started remembering my own father's experience as a barefooter in high school

and football it was very common to do a lot of training in barefoot.

I remember my aunt who had some high school track records, and her bemoaning the fact

that somewhere I think it was '64 that the essentially the sporting goods associations

in the United States lobbied and made it so that you had start wearing sport shoes in

high school sports.

Before that, I went and investigated -- this was quite fascinating, entire cross country

teams would be barefoot.

Barefoot training was not unusual.

Matter of fact, barefooting had kind of had a boom even previous to 50 years ago today.

Something I'll tell you, some of you who have read 'Born to Run' know already, even previous

to that there were people, like there was a fellow from Australia named Herb Elliot,

one of the early Australians to be able to get some medals in track and field.

And he had this kind of wacko coach named Percy Cerutty who apparently took these guys

and had them training like indigenous people of Australia, and had them running barefoot

all over the place, and ended up having great efficacy for these guys.

And matter of fact Herb Elliot, a barefooter runner, was on the cover of Sports Illustrated

twice, once in the late 50s and again in the early 60s.

So there was a whole generation of people, my father and my aunt and others, that barefoot

running in and on its face was not unusual and furthermore, running in shoes that weren't

padded or cushioned in any way was not unusual.

And matter of fact, part of the training techniques of being able to learn how to run this way,

either by default based on the fact that you didn't have any padding in your shoe or because

you had a great coach and you learned how to run well, you learned how to run in a way

that wasn't pounding the hell out of you.

These people that ran marathons back before the padded shoe, weren't taking on as much

impact as you might imagine based on the way most people think they need shoes today.

But anyway, all of these things started flooding through my mind including, I had just been

to -- my daughter had been in a triathlon, a kids' triathlon thing, and I remember the

first place kid running through carrying his shoes.

So just a flood of memories.

And then, of course, I even remembered in the newspapers the Tarahumara, the Indians

from Northern Mexico, would come and race this one race near where I'd grown up called

the Angeles Press 100.

And they'd come and run in these shoes that were made out of old tires.

I mean, I don't know if you've ever put a tire on your foot and started running, you'll

find out real quickly there's no cushioning in a tire at all.

Great protection, though, if you decide that you want to step on -- start running down

a hill at high speed and suddenly find yourself stepping on sharp rocks or wanting to brake

to make a turn. In that case, I would say they are awesome.

So anyway, I clicked that click and went over to Ken Bob's site and I was like okay, here

we go.

Let me just see what this guy has to say.

And I -- what I did I very methodically read everything he had written, followed through

every link that linked from his website, went to his Yahoo forum and read every input that

had started from when he – when he had started this forum.

And slowly but surely, I think that I took in from that all of the things, the ideas

about what kind of form I would expect, how far I would -- you know, what kind of things

I would have to look out for to start this journey of barefoot running.

At this point, I hadn't really tried it, so I had no idea what I was going to expect.

So I read all that.

I think three days later, I'd completed reading everything.

I had read every article, every link, and I was like -- sounds like I'm good to go.

So I went out and unbelievably -- I'd been like I'd said I'd been running periodically

all my life, so I knew kind of what to expect.

I knew about running.

But when I applied myself in this new kind of style of running which was much more about

learning how to land more on the forefoot or more up on the front part of my foot rather

than on my heel that involved having a much quicker cadence, a quicker turnover of my

feet.

And it was like an instantaneous epiphany that this was -- and by the way, I'm running

at this point I'm running on asphalt, concrete and then eventually to some horse trails but