Unleash The Feet!

Should you go barefoot?

You may or not have heard of the barefoot running trend…. If you haven’t in a nut shell it's exactly what it says on the tin, running whilst, you guessed it…. Barefoot. Well that’s not exactly true. Whilst you can run totally barefoot, the issue of twigs rocks etc etc can get pretty painful, unless of course you hail from the likes of the huaorani people who have always walked and ran their Amazonian home totally barefoot so are used to it, but even their feet are messed up. Don’t take my word for it stick it in google images, there are some pretty obscure feet there, but hey these guys are totally natural so I guess we are the ones with the messed up fee,t not them.

Any ways putting the huaorani people aside, if you have been used to encasing your feet in shoes all your life companies have now got on board with the benefits of barefoot running whilst at the same time offering your feet some protection. The vibrant 5 fingers shoe being one example.

However I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here. I want to tell you why I have starting to look into barefoot running and the benefits it brings.

To be honest my first introduction to the barefoot running world was the shoes and how weird they looked and after a bit of scoffing that was where my interest ended. If you read the first blog post I put up on here you’ll know that it has been a while since I was pounding out the trails in Northern England the Salomon Speedcross being my favoured shoe and now London is my new home the hunger for the trail has grown steadily until I could ignore it no more.

So I stuck on my Brooks that I used for road running and started out with a run to the local park one early Sunday morning. The first section of the run would be road (hence the choice in the Brooks) and then some grassy trails through the park bringing me to loop back around to the road and home, nearly 7K, perfect. However at the end of that first run 7K was a dream. Just as I got to the gates of the park I had to stop my ankles were killing me. The throbbing had started more or less straight away but I put it down to the fact I haven’t been out on the road running for a long time so I just ground it out. Once I got to the gates of the park the pain was too much. I turned back walking the way I had come. Half way home I puzzled as to why the treadmill and the road were so different. I’d been running the treadmill for a few months now, sometimes 3 or 4 times a week and never had any pain. Then it hit me, the shoes. The shoes were the only thing different. I currently had on a pair of Brooks GTS Adrenaline and my gym trainers were Nike Pegasus 31’s with flat soles.

I got home, changed my shoes to the Nikes and set out again. The difference was like night and day. I not only got to the park but I did the whole 7k. Don’t get me wrong my ankles still throbbed a bit and the soreness was there but it was the sort of pain that you sometimes get as a runner the sort of pain that I could grind through. Reflecting back after the run I wondered why the change of shoes had such a dramatic effect.

When I moved down to London I did start to do some road running in the Brooks. I had bought these from a shop in Manchester where they had tested my gait on the treadmill. The Brooks were apparently the best shoe for me as apparently I tended to pron ate so the Brooks I bought have a slightly raised mid sole to compensate for this. However I had to stop running after getting shin splints all the time so shied away from outdoor road running blaming the hard surface for the shin splints I kept getting never once thinking I could be using the wrong shoe.

Now after getting a better run from a flat soled shoe than one with a raised mid sole I started to think, “what if for me the flatter the surface the better?” And the possible solution of barefoot running came into play.

Now after doing some research on this, barefoot running is something that it is advised to start with gradually. After years being encased in a running shoe with the support that that brings, your feet just aren’t used to the new option of being able to grip the ground with each toe as they were made to do. That is why it is advised to do a little bit on your regular run. Just whip off your shoes and get running in your socks for a bit. Yes it may look a little weird and yes you need to watch out for the various animal

poo and the twigs and small stones but if you're thinking of giving barefoot running a go it’s the place to start.

For me if this works out and I find that I’m wanting to whip my shoes off more and more on a run. That will be the time to start looking into getting some barefoot running shoes but why make the investment before you know that this is the way you wanna go. To be honest I think I need to get over my hang up of how weird they look, however they can’t look as weird as me running through the park in my socks wearing my shoes as gloves!!