But if they were enclosed, I wouldn’t look like I had gorilla feet! Where’s the fun in that?
I don’t have a pair, but I’ve been eying the flows for some time now. I took up dinghy sailing last summer, and I’d love a more flexible pair of footwear - if nothing else, being able to wrap my toes around the side of the boat to hang on would be amazing. I do have freakishly long toes, though, so I’m a little worried that they won’t fit me. I think I’ll go take a look at them when the weather warms up, though.
Hah, 8 minutes is enough starting out! It’s amazing the muscles you use running with proper form that never get used in shoes. I never thought the arch of my foot could get exhausted.
I started barefoot running last summer and it took two months to get my lower legs in good enough shape to be running 5ks, barefoot this time.
So how long are the toes? I think I would like these, but I have really short, fat toes and I’m wondering about the fit.
I used to always go barefoot, but my tootsies are too tender since I had to start wearing shoes.
I’ve never been able to jog or run “properly” because it hurts. I could run barefoot, up on the balls of my feet, but that wasn’t how everyone said to do it. NOW they tell me I was right all along!
They also felt kind of “dead”, like I guess my regular running shoes help me out with some spring or something? It definitely felt like I was working harder.
Here’s a site which has pictures/videos of the pressure profile of landing with your heel vs the ball of your foot: Biomechanics of Foot Strike (scroll to the bottom of the page)
You can see that the heel strike has an immediate vertical pressure spike. That force is trasmitted straight up through your body. Constrast that with landing on the forefoot (as you do barefoot), the pressure goes up more gradually.
I hope this isn’t too much of a zombie thread for a bump.
For those who run a lot and wear the Vibrams, do you run races longer than 5k? I have 2 half-marathons scheduled in May. I’m really intrigued by the Vibrams (I tried them on back in January, but it’s too cold here for me to wear them outside in the winter), so I think I might pick them up for my primary training shoes. I would try to wear them 4 runs per week, and the regular running shoes 2 runs per week. Have any other runners tried something similar? Is it too much of adjusting back and forth on the body? What’s the longest race you’ve run with the Vibrams?