Nike Free and Running Barefoot

Today, for the first time in over 1500 miles (almost a year), I ran in something other than the Nike Air Zoom Vomero. As you can imagine, this was not a decision made lightly. The thought of running in something so unknown was downright scary. So, why’d I do it?

Well, a big chunk of the reason was the book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. He talks about the Tarahumara Indians who have been running insane mileage for centuries on very lightly padded sandals and have remained largely injury free. He then goes on to talk about how humans evolved as a distance running animal (barefoot) and cited studies showing that injury rates have done nothing but rise since the advent of over-cushioned running shoes.

It makes sense. There are two ways running shoes cause injury: 1.) They keep the arch of your foot — one of the strongest parts of our running anatomy — from being fully utilized. 2.) They muffle the data that your feet would normally be transmitting back to your brain about stride, pronation, etc. Because of the padding, you don’t feel pain when you should, and as a result, never correct your stride. But the padding isn’t enough to protect your joints from the incorrect stride over time and eventually injuries pop up in your knees, ankles, and elsewhere.

I have some big goals on the horizon (most notably a sub-3 hour marathon this fall, a solid running of Boston in the spring, and my first 50 miler next fall) and know that to achieve any of these, I’m going to have to push my mileage beyond the 40-50 miles/week that I’ve been averaging. The problem is, every time I try to bump up the miles, my body screams at me and I am forced to scale back to avoid impending injury.

Now that I have a few weeks before getting into full scale marathon training again, it seems like a perfect opportunity to experiment with new things to see how I can get my mileage up. I’m trying the new shoes and also I’m going to start introducing two-a-days into my weekly routine.

I bought a pair of Vibram Five Fingers a couple weeks ago and have been wearing them on errands, playing Frisbee, and such, but haven’t been able to take the plunge and actually go for a run in them yet. I decided that it would be better to work my way down from shoes to barefooting gradually, rather than just plunging in (and almost certainly hurting myself.)

That’s where the Nike Free comes in. I bought a pair of them (the 5.0 V4) down at Paragon yesterday. They are, without a doubt, the ugliest shoes I’ve ever owned (the material looks exactly like a tennis ball, both in texture and color), but they’re also one of the coolest pairs I’ve ever owned. You can easily bend them in half (amazing flexibility) and they are super lightweight and breathable.

I took them out for a 4 mile run this afternoon at a decent clip (6:59/mile) and they held up beautifully. I was running on cobblestones along the East River and so it was just about the toughest terrain I could tackle, but it didn’t pose any problems. I felt much more aware of the road. And, when I got home, my calves had a solid burn that told me they’d been getting a better workout than normal. Towards the end of the run, as the afternoon heat began taking it’s toll, I noticed a couple times that my form would begin to falter but I’d correct myself immediately after receiving immediate pain feedback from my ankle.

Still, I decided to go with the Zoom Vomeros for my evening hill workout as I didn’t want to push the new shoes too much, too soon. As a side note, that was one of the best workouts I’ve ever done. It was 7.3 miles from home to Central Park and then the upper loop (with Harlem Hill) three times. It was incredibly hot and muggy and would have been a tough workout even without the short rest. Definitely a good start to the week.

Anyway, back to the shoes… Have any of you all experimented with lighter shoes? Or no shoes? How’d it go? Is my reasoning sound here? Or did I just jump into the crazy end of the pool?