2.09K (26 min) & my feet hurt!

So I walked to work this morning, I had to do it a quite a fast pace, because like every Sunday morning, I was behind schedule & late. I blame my 2 year old, who decided to read stories to the bump at 6am. In reality, I should have wore better shoes & I might have been on time.

I wore Crocs, the rubber shoes with holes in, and now my feet ache beyond belief.

So it's kinda had me thinking about barefoot running, there's a bit of a renaissance in this going on, although all the ladies & gents I see around my local park wear shoes.
It's hard to get my head past the "won't that rip my feet to bits?!" and the "but it'll hurt?!" "what about in the winter?!" reactions. But I really do remember desperatly trying to take my shoes off at every opportunity when I was a little nipper.

The thing barefoot runners say, is that running barefoot takes you back to the way humans are supposed to run, we're not Jack Hawksmoor (geek reference there, sorry. He's a comic book character who has rubber soles, so doesn't need to wear shoes) so, they suggest, wearing padded running shoes alters the natural gait of humans, potentially causes more injury & uses more energy than running barefoot. And, they add, of course sports wear companies want you to wear running shoes, they make & charge you for them, there are still thousands of people too poor to afford fancy shoes, who run just as well, if not better, than those in fancy running kit.


I must admit to being quite taken by the Vibram Fiver Finger solution to running barefoot. They're like some kind of foot glove, with toes, and a grip on the bottom that's broken to the separate parts of the foot.But then that just seems to be playing to both sides of the fence, and those shoes are just as expensive as the regular kind of running shoes! An expensive mistake to buy some & then hate the experience.


My internal jury is out, I'm not sure how much research or evidence each side has, for the pros & cons, some serious googling needs to be done before I'm tempted to venture further than the back yard barefoot.

I have a million questions for barefoot / Vibram wearers...
How's the weather affect your training?
Do you have places you can't / won't run?
Just how good are the Vibrams? Do they actually compare with barefoot?

oh the list could go on & on