Kids Seriously Over-embarrassed

These are my new running shoes. Except that they're not really shoes. They're more like rubber gloves for my feet. They're called Vibram Five Fingers, and are the KSO (for "Keep Stuff Out") model. The acronym also works for the title of this post, though, which is more to the point. I actually wore them to the Music Festival Honours Concert specifically in order to embarrass my children and they were effective to the extreme.

I read "Born to Run" a few weeks ago and it all made perfect sense to me: our bare feet were made for running. They have incredible natural bio-engineering in them -- arches and joints and nerve endings and natural flexibility -- all built for barefoot ambulation, and more to the point evolved to perfection for marathon-style "persistence hunting." Historically sandals or simple shoes provided some protection in cold climates and on very rough ground, and heels were useful with stirrups for horseback riding. Eventually, of course, they became part of a fashion statement.

But eventually, primarily within the last 40 years, we began raising the heel of our running shoes too and adding comfortable rubber/gel/foam/air cushioning underneath. This meant that running form changed. We began running with a heel-strike, i.e. landing on our heels rather than on the middle of the foot with its lateral and longitudinal arches and all the natural shock absorption and stability the foot as a whole is capable of. The heel is a round knob of bone and thick skin with no natural engineering for lateral stability or flexible shock-absorption. So it's not surprising that weird stresses from landing on that hard rounded knob began creating injuries in runners. Ilio-tibial band syndrome, shin splints, runner's knee. Here's a great video comparing natural running to running in cushioned motion-control shoes. Research shows that the stress on the knee is actually higher in runners wearing $100 shock-absorbing shoes than it is in the same people wearing nothing at all. Why? Because we run differently in expensive shoes. We run badly. Though this type of running form is considered normal now.

I am generally drawn to natural simplicity and even last summer, for reasons that weren't as much scientific as aesthetic, I began experimenting with barefoot running. However I got a nasty sharp thing buried in my sole at some point, so I bought some less robust shoes as a compromise. Then a few weeks later got the hip injury that was miraculously cured three months later by even more supportive and cushioning shoes. It seemed like a failed experiment.

But I think that I did two things wrong. First, I ran completely barefoot on trails without first conditioning my feet to outdoor barefootedness. And secondly, I did a lot of running in my minimally-cushioning shoes without changing my heel-strike.

So here I am again. I'm trying to learn to run with a mid-foot strike and a fast light cadence even in my Asics Kayanos, and then I'm using the sensory feedback I get through bare feet or the super thin Vibram Five Fingers soles to train the bottoms of my feet to feel the surface I'm running on and respond accordingly. So far I'm only running a couple of kilometres at a time in the VFFs. My calves are a bit sore from the extra work they do, and there are the inevitable almost-blisters that always come of getting used to a new running shoe. But the running itself feels light and comfortable. I'm hopeful. Hopeful that I can continue to create mortifying embarrassment for my children for years to come.