The Natural Running Center has just launched! Its web site combines the world’s top running scientists, clinicians, coaches, and a half-dozen stores that completely embrace better running form and less shoe.
Four months in development, the Natural Running Center is led by its three co- founders — myself as executive director, creative and editorial director Bill Katovsky, who is an editor, author, and creator of Zero Drop; and web and shoe reviewer editor Nicholas Pang of www.minimalistrunningshoes.org.
Two Rivers Treads is the flagship store of the Natural Running Center. Big things happen in small places. Such as in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
About the Natural Running Center. The current natural running movement is the confluence where doctors, other health professionals, coaches, and runners are now joining and discovering the injury-prevention formula. The Natural Running Center (NRC) will provide physicians, healthcare providers, coaches, and runners with the tools to educate and inspire everyone to relearn how to run and improve their health.
Why is this movement occurring now? In most large-scale change involving health issues we have waited for the top-down declarations. This is where academia announces important discoveries and tries to move the discovery into a physician’s daily practice. This is a slow process and on average it takes 10 years for an important medical discovery to become routine in a clinician’s practice. Instead, the movement toward a healthier and sustainable way to run is occurring in a popular, bottom-up revolution. This is where the people, in this case the runners, are the gathering force. While shoe companies have finally taken serious notice here with a wide variety of new designs and models, it’s the runners themselves who have discovered the positive benefits — changes that are literally happening underfoot. These runners come from many backgrounds –barefoot, legions of Chi Runners, all those newly adopters of minimalist shoes, devoted fans of Chris McDougall’s bestseller Born to Run, and formerly injured runners who are running pain-free for the first time in ages.
There are important scientific work and writings supporting the principles of proper gait movement patterns and the dysfunction triggered by elevated heel and overly cushioned shoes. We wish to share this information in an accessible way the average runner can understand. The essential core message of the Natural Running Center is that we want every runner to be able to make an healthy, injury-free transition to better running mechanics.
The regular features and departments of the Natural Running Center include the following: detailed shoe reviews (over 60 models — barefoot style, minimalist, neutral/transition, and walking/casual); footwear education and training tips by coaching and gait experts; articles by NRC’s health, science and medical advisory board members; separate pages for all natural running stores that are partnered with the NRC; and much more. –Dr. Mark
