Barefoot running technique

There's a lot of good videos on Youtube demonstrating the technique of running barefoot. This one is a good starting point and explains the concept in an understandable pedagogic way.

Review: Adidas Adipure Gazelle

Sweden is a cold country, harsh winters. I know there are a lot of runners out there who claims that running barefoot in the snow is no problem, but as I'm pretty new to the concept of running with nude feet I wanted to take precautions. When running barefoot one "issue" is not to step on things that can injure you. Thus, nature gave us eyes. When you see a broken bottle- you simply choose not to step on it. But I can see a problem when your eyes do not spot the broken bottle- as it might be covered in snow. That's where I find the Minimalistic shoe concept entering the stage. For those who don't know- a minimalistic running shoe has zero or almost zero heel-toe-drop. I.e. there's no difference in sole thickness between the heel and the toe- thus enabling you to run with the barefoot running technique.

I went to my local running shoe dealer who helped me pick out 4 pair of shoes that would give the most barefoot feeling. I rejected two of them instantly because of their weight and clumsiness. Can't remember the models. Ended up with "Adidas Adipure Gazelle" and "Saucony Hattori LC". The Saucony shoe felt great on. Good toe spread. But it felt a bit "breakable" especially around the lacing- almost too delicate if you know what I mean. I want a shoe to endure at least a season- and as I said the Swedish winters are tough. I'm sure the Saucony shoe is strong and durable and I have read great reviews on it, but this was my choice.

So I ended up with the Adidas. I have run in them now for about 70 km. The first thing that happened was that I got a blister on my arch. The edge of the insole in the arch area (picture below) is kind of sharp- resulting in a blister. All feet are individual and I understand it's hard to make a shoe that fits all- so these things just happen I guess. 

If you compare the toe part of the Adidas and the Saucony shoe, the latter one looks as it allows for better toe spread. The Adidas has a more conventional shape than the Saucony which looks like a duck foot. But the material covering the shoe on the Adidas was to my surprise extremely flexible, allowing for enough toe spread in my meaning.

The lacing is well engineered and enables an almost perfect fit (at least on my feet). The sole is not as flexible as you might wish, I have seen shoes that you can crumple like a dishcloth, but then I wanted a shoe for winter conditions so I'm fine with this "semi flexible" sole.

In summary this is an "OK" shoe that meets my expectations. It will be interesting to see how it performs when the winter arrives. More about that in later posts.

Minimalistic

The running shoe industry (manufacturers and resellers) advises us- new to barefoot running- to run shoe-less or in minimalistic shoes only a couple of minutes a day. In a video I saw the other day from a major Swedish sports equipment reseller it was said that barefoot training was only to consider an addition to "regular" training/running in cushioning shoes. You may wonder (I do) how come? Well prices on minimalistic shoes is about half of what cushioning shoes costs so you don't have to be a math genius to figure out that the industry would lose a huge amount of money if everybody would start running in minimalistic shoes- not to say barefoot.

Thus the industry recommends that we use the minimalistic shoes in addition to our "traditional" shoes. Isn't that fabulous! So, we are supposed to keep running in cushioning shoes so that we get injured- and then we should use minimalistic shoes so we can heal... I have to applaud the shoe industry for coming up with such a cunning plan.

Born to run (yet another push)

Many barefoot running blogs recommends the book "Born to run" by Christopher McDougall. So- why should I? Simply because it's the book that changed my life in general and my running in particular. I know it's kind of a heavy statement that a book can change a life, but the only way to find out if that can be true is to read it for yourself. So why not?

Born to run- @ Amazon

Bort to run- @ AdLibris (Sweden)