The Barefoot Running Experiment

On various running forums and in most of the running magazines I have browsed through in recent months there has been mention of a new fad amongst runners to go barefoot. That's right, they ditch the €15 padded sweat-wicking socks and the €100 trainers designed to protect you from the forces applied to your body by repeated pounding of the concrete. Its obviously an appealing idea in times of economic crisis, but ignoring the cost saving I initially, as most other sane people would, thought it was madness. However, after reading a few articles I've been persuaded that it might be worth a shot.

The main "potential" advantage of barefoot running is that it may be prevent repetitive strain injuries, which are the bane of anyone training for a marathon. The argument runs something like this, when wearing trainers your running gait adjusts so that when your foot hits the ground it is heel-first, you are a heel-striker, and this gives a sharp force that goes straight up your leg risking injury to calves, knees and hamstrings. However, when running barefoot you tend to land on the ball of the foot just behind toes, you land with less force and you make use of all the shock absorption capabilities in the foot to prevent the sharp force going up the leg.

Here are a few links that I found useful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jrnj-7YKZE
http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-240-319--6728-0,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/feb/07/the-challenge-barefoot-running
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_running

One of the more philosophical arguments is that by wearing shoes to run we are going against thousands of years of evolution, since man learned to run barefoot. However, this argument conveniently ignores the fact that despite this evolution somewhere along the line someone decided there was a reason to create a running shoe, i.e. when people ran barefoot they got injured so somebody had the eureka moment and created the trainer.

If you watch the youtube video above there are what seems very convincing graphs measuring the forces resulting from running barefoot and in shoes, with two peaks for the shod runner and a smooth hump for the barefoot runner. I have one fairly major question mark over what they are doing, you can see in the video that they put the sensors on the shoe rather than on the foot of the shod runner, so they are measuring the forces applied to the shoe rather than the foot. If the trainer is effective at absorbing the force of the heel strike then the two peaks of forces shouldn't be so much of a problem.

I hope you can see from the last two paragraphs that I am questioning the argument in favour of barefoot running, but I thought it was worth a go anyway. The main point for me is that running without shoes you will run differently so different muscles in your feet and legs will get exercised, leaving your feet and legs stronger.

This morning I headed out for the first time leaving my trainers and socks at home. I had read that I should ease in to it, precisely because you are using muscles you don't normally use you need to be gentle to start with, so just went out for a little over a kilometre. So how was it?

The first thing that occurred to me was that it wasn't as cold as i'd imagined, the initial step outside gave a little bit of a chill, but within thirty seconds I was already accustomed. I had read about the joys of feeling the ground beneath your feet, I was running on concrete and I definitely couldn't describe it as a joy, I guess on grass or on sand I might have a better experience but on those surfaces it is more difficult to see what you are treading on. I did find I was shortening my stride quite alot which almost inevitably led to a slower pace than normal, I averaged 5:18 min/km, in the past year and a half of using a GPS I don't think I've ever run slower than 5min/km. The most notable thing from the run was the reaction of people, while pedestrians I passed seemed oblivious to the fact I was without shoes, three or four people felt the need to shout at me from their cars to point out that I didn't have trainers, people are so helpful!

Will I try it again? Yes. Will I completely abandon my trainers in the near future? Definitely no! I think it is worth adding to my training as a different kind of session, just to keep things interesting, but the restrictions placed on where you can go and when make barefoot running quite limiting, I wouldn't run in the dark both because of the cold and fear of where I might be treading. I think it might add something to my training, i'll build-up the distance I am doing barefoot and let you know how it goes.