Weekly post: What did you do?

[cereta]

You know the drill!

Comments

[zennish]

Hm! FASCINATIN', as the good doctor would say.

I have heard about the Fivefingers! My concern mainly with those is fit (tiny heel and ridiculously wide feet here) and the complete lack of cushioning - I have no doubt that biomechanically they're probably the most 'barefoot' shoe of all, but I really doubt that the calves and ligaments in my feet are strong enough to race semi-long distances in two/three months wearing them without completely shattering my legs. I'm hoping that even if Saucony's jumping on the barefoot + running = profit! bandwagon, as long as the forefoot has enough padding and the sole has flex, it might work as a transitional/speed shoe. I've tried Nike Frees before, and the forefoot's just so un-padded that impact shockwaved up everything and worsened my shin splints, and the heel's still pretty thick.

I've heard good things about Newton shoes too, but I've got a feeling that if they run close to 200$ in the US, they're gonna run at least 275$ (!) before tax up here in Canada. One good thing about the Kinvaras is that the forefoot drop from the heel is about the same as the Newtons - I think 4mm? - which sounds promising.

I've never heard of Vivo shoes, though - are they an American brand? and if you wrote a writeup that would be awesome and no doubt informative!

[rydra_wong]

I really doubt that the calves and ligaments in my feet are strong enough to race semi-long distances in two/three months wearing them without completely shattering my legs.

Can't comment on running, but what I found was that switching to the Vivos (which are very very minimalist) forced me to shift my gait completely when walking. I found that if I walked as I'd normally walk in shoes, it was uncomfortable as hell; if I reset my brain to think I was walking barefoot on a hard surface (most of my walking happens on London pavements), I rolled through my feet in a different way and it became fine.

(Apparently there's some interesting research suggesting that barefoot walking produces less impact on the joints, for that reason.)

I tried barefoot shoes initially because I was trying to correct the alignment of my legs while walking to fix my knee problems, and found that it was easiest to do when I was wearing an ancient pair of shoes with very thin, flat soles. The barefoot shoes turned out to be even better, and my knees are now fine a good 95% of the time.

It'll be interesting to see how the shoes work for occasional sprints on turf, but indications so far are positive.

So, yeah, I suspect it depends whether you want to try a full-on "barefoot" mode, which will probably require shifting your running gait quite a bit and is generally a big change. Or go for a shoe that encourages forefoot landing but has enough cushioning where you want it.

Individual choice, individual needs, YMMV, etc.