Ill Concieved Plans Poorly executed

Barefoot Running

I've toyed with the idea of running barefoot for a while now. It's not that I'm some raving new young radical or anything it's just that the concept of having your feet in contact with the ground seems so much better than encasing them in plastic and fabric. Conceptually it feels the right thing to do. It has taken a long lime to take those first steps though. Everyone wears shoes. Look round there is almost nobody out there not in shoes. Running barefoot would make me stand out as someone "not quite normal" and all the ridicule that would entail. There is also the issue of feet. They have been mollycoddled in shoes for many, many years and so are not hardened to the rigours of the outside world.

A few things finally tipped the balance. An excellent website on the subject written by an obvious advocate of barefoot running was the prime motivation. Claims that it was more natural aligned with my thoughts and the claim that it would help foot problems such as Plantar Fasciitis really hit home. I have suffered from this for nearly two years and I'm willing to give anything a go to rid myself of this annoying condition. Finally it was seeing someone doing the run leg of a triathlon unshod that convinced me to have a go.

The first obstacle was the gravel path that leads from my house; I just had to accept that there would be a little discomfort involved in this enterprise. I got changed into my running gear minus shoes and socks, put the lead on the dog (she has no problems with this barefoot concept) and launched myself on an unsuspecting public. It was quite odd. The gravel wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. The path up to the recreation ground was really quite smooth where as the path across the green was much rougher. Running on the grass was nice, apart from the twigs that had fallen from the oak tree. The first run had introduced me to a whole host of new sensations that I'd missed by wearing shoes. I could now feel the surface I was running on.

There were of course downsides to this mode of transport: Blisters. My soft feet were just not up to the rigours of asphalt and had grown a small crop of the little blighters. Undeterred I persevered with a series of short runs. Slowly the blisters healed and my feet got used to what was expected of them. They didn't exactly harden they just adapted to cope with the new conditions.

There where a few other pleasant side effects as well, when you run incorrectly your feet soon let you know about it. Heel striking rapidly becomes a redundant feature. Rather than cushion the blow like shoes your feet give you instant feedback on how much of a bad idea heel striking really is. Running becomes a graceful set of movements aimed at placing you heel gently on the ground and then raising it off the ground rather that the thud, thud, thud that it was before.

I'm still at the early stages of this particular little avenue of running but I'm quite looking forward to running a few of the local footpaths unshod.