So the good news is that your body is functioning properly, and those 250,000 sweat glands per foot are producing their fair share of about a pint of salty fluid each day! But before you rush to devise some plan for converting that liquid into a zesty sports drink, consider the source of your foul smelling feet: bacteria.
Allow me to introduce you to a couple of sweat eating friends who inhabit your body: Mr. Corynebacteria and his partner Señor Micrococci. This dynamic duo of the warm and damp ingest organic substances found in your skin, along with your sweat, and produce.Running is a high impact sport which means you need specific trainers designed for that activity. If you're running you need a proper running trainer to give you the correct support (your cross trainers or netball shoes will not be sufficient!).
A few relevant details about the study. The shoes they used were Nike Mayflys, which are very light shoes, with a mass of 135.6 grams for a men's size 9. The 12 runners included in the study were all experienced barefoot runners, running at least 8K (5 miles) a week barefoot or in minimalist footwear. That's not much, but avoids problems with a barefoot learning curve that may have confused previous studies. Finally, all the runners were midfoot or forefoot strikers, both barefoot and in shoes. This condition was imposed to prevent confounding effects from comparing rearfoot to forefoot striking efficiency.
These conditions raise an important caveat. One of the proposed advantages of barefoot-minimalist running is that it automatically helps to correct overstriding -- an extremely common problem among inexperienced runners. The fact that all these runners were already forefoot strikes suggests that none of them were likely overstriding, which would make them less likely to benefit from barefoot running. It's possible that a truly "random" group of runners might have been less efficient in the shod condition, because more of them would have been dramatically overstriding.
Anyway, the bottom line is: this is a surprising result, at least to me. In the long-running debate over running form and running shoes, many of us had started to accept the claim that cushioning in running shoes serves no purpose. But maybe it does, after all. This debate is far from over!
The cure for what ails you is to evict the stink producing bacteria from your feet, socks and shoes by reducing the amount of sweat left in your shoes after you run. Store your shoes in a cool, dry place and remove the sole insert, and the bacteria will go hungry.
There are sprays and powders you can apply to hasten the drying process, but I have found that keeping them in a cool dry place is quite effective, and I find most of the powders and sprays to smell equally offensive as does "bacterial stink".
I like to put one of those "dryer sheets" in each shoe after I run. These tend to mask any smell that might linger, while serving as an absorption medium for any transient "sweat steam" which could have invaded my running shoes following a particularly intense workout.
Be warned that the same condition which causes "stink foot" can lead to a condition known as tinea pedis, or "athletes foot", a fungal infection which would make this "Dear Stinky" letter lead directly to a "Dear Itchy" letter you don't want to receive, and I wouldn't want to have to write.
Wearing the right kind of running socks can help keep your shoes from getting and staying wet. It's important to wear non-cotton, synthetic running socks because they'll wick away the moisture, rather than staying wet (which is what happens with cotton socks).
Store your shoes in a cool, dry place and remove the sole insert, to prevent bacteria from growing.
Rotate two pairs of running shoes, so you can give one pair a chance to dry out when you're not wearing them.
Sprinkle some baking soda or a dryer sheet in your running shoes after a run. Either item will help mask odor and absorb remaining moisture.
If your shoes get wet (after a rainy run, for example), take them off and stuff them with crumpled balls of newspaper. This helps the shoes keep their shape, and the paper draws moisture away from the shoes to prevent them from getting musty.
Okay, shoe weight matters in some situations, racing flats being the best example. They should be all about speed, staying out of your way, and not holding you back. That’s why the best flats are typically firm and ultra flexible to promote quick turnover and, yes, lightweight in order to not weigh you down.
Almost all racing flats weigh in the single digits of ounces, and almost all trainers tip the postage scale well north of ten ounces (usually the 12- to 14-ounce range, occasionally higher, hence the obsession with "trying to get it under 12 ounces"). While the weight differences between racers and trainers are easily discernable to the casual observer by bouncing one of each in the hands, being concerned with fractions of ounces in training shoes is a waste of time for most of us—for several reasons.
First, advertised shoe weights usually refer to a men’s size nine. Of course, one man’s nine is another man’s nine-and-a-half; the weight edge here going to the model that fits the smallest. Since we often find that different sizes fit us in different models, if you’re going to compare the weight of different shoes as part of your selection process, a fair comparison is weighing the size that fits you best in each.
Second, advertised shoe weights are often fantasy. Unless every postage scale I’ve owned over the last couple of decades was defective, most shoes are weighed with somebody’s thumb underneath. Okay, maybe not, but if the advertised weight is inaccurate, it’s never higher than the reading on my scale for some
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