Do you remember your first outing barefoot?

skedaddle

Barefooters
Sep 3, 2011
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I guess it's on of those milestone events that stay with you, I remember very clearly the first time I went for a run barefoot.
It was early morning, sun just rising, I thought I'd feel more comfortable with less folk about only to turn a corner and run into a bunch of about thirty or so very drunk, very loud football supporters waiting for a coach to be taken to the match. I had what you could call a baptism of fire, looking back it's funny but at the time I thought I was a gonna.
What's your recollections, experiences, feelings? New to barefoot or old guard, it doesn't matter, just thought it would be nice to here how people made their first steps into this wonderful world of barefootedness.
 
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I remember mine, I had been running in VFF's (2009, I think they had just started to become popular) for a few weeks. I was reading on the RW forum that there were several people running real barefoot so I decided to take the leap. It was ~5:30 AM, a pre-work workout, I started my run barefoot but I was carrying my VFF's. I knew from reading stuff from KenBob and BFTJ that I needed to start slow. I ran about 1/2 mile barefoot, stopped on the curb and put on the VFF's.

Best part is, I had a 5k the following weekend, I didn't think I was ready to run it minimal/barefoot so I wore my Asics for the race. After about 1.5 miles my feet hurt so bad that I took off my shoes and finished the race barefoot. I never wore shoes for running again after that morning.

There's a pic somewhere with me carrying my shoes in the race, I'll see if I can dig it up.
 
Found it...those are $120 Asics with about 20 miles on them. I traded them a few years later for a case of beer.
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As a child? No. As an adult? Oh yes. I will never forget it. It took me back to my childhood. I was so grateful.
 
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I remember my very first barefoot run as well.
It was a weekend morning in June 2009. I ran about 1 mile on a rubber track barefoot. I felt great but my soles were on fire after that. Had to take the next day off because of the soreness.
 
yes I will never forget
I started from home,
ran 2 km, it was weird at the beginning, felt some joy, like freedom, euphoria
very soon became painful
after 2 km I was 2 km from home and had to come back home with burning soles...

I gave up after few attempts, and shod my shoes again
two years later, heard about Born to Run, KB Saxton book, BRS,
tried again, and here I am :)
 
11 miles on a beach on April 1st 2010. Same again the next day. It was a few more weeks before I took my KSOs off in Manhattan and ran the last 2 miles of my commute home barefoot.
I'd been running in KSOs for several months before I did my first barefoot run - only my soles had to adapt!
 
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je n'étais pas encore un barefooter convertis.
durant mon adolescence : défiant mon père, en faisant quelques pas dans la pelouse.;) Mais, à cet âge, tout se ligue contre vous et mon pied a fait la connaissance d'une femelle bourdon (celle qui pique):hurting:
heureusement, ce souvenir freudien ne m'a pas découragé 20 ans plus tard !:p
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I was not yet converted Barefooter.
during my adolescence: defying my father, taking a few steps in the lawn .;) But at this age, the odds are against you and my foot has met a female bumblebee (the one that stings) :hurting:
Fortunately, this Freudian memory does not discourage me 20 years later:p
 
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I remember being extremely nervous about my first run. I had been wanting to try it for a while -I was frustrated that knee pain was stopping me from running when the only thing I knew was clopping around in trainers.
I read a lot about it before starting and, thinking back, probably had far too much information bouncing around in my head to be able to relax at all.
My nerves however were driven more by an unwarranted anxiety about how I would deal with other peoples reactions (I had already convinced myself that I was going to look slightly odd to other folk) -Sked, your experience of running past a large group of football supporters was just the sort of nightmare scenario I imagined!
So, in common with most other people it seems, I ventured out early one morning.
As it turned out I ran past just a handful of people and seemed to attract very little reaction at all, aside from an occasional glancing second look. I only ran for 5-10 minutes, but remember feeling an amazing sense of fulfilment, freedom and 'Wow that was really fun!'. I loved the feeling of the ground truly beneath my feet.
...and I still get that feeling now....
 
It started with a barefoot walk, some 32 years ago...
In the public outdoor swimming pool I had just met first time the girl who was later to become my wife. So after an afternoon of fun in the pool we spontaneously decided to walk back home barefoot. That meant a bit over 3 miles all across town, as we had just discovered that we both came from the same neighborhood. After the walk, the soles of our feet were dark with city road debris and my girlfriend ran into some trouble with her parents and the white carpets in their appartment. But nevertheless, she showed up when I invited her for another date and eventually became my wife. Many years of marriage and five children later, we now live and occasionally run barefoot as much as possible...
Burkhard
 
I had been running entirely in vibram KSO's for about 11 months (give or take a couple weeks) when i decided to be Some video game character for halloween in october of 2009. Said character wore cloth wraps and sandals instead of shoes, but as I only had athletic tape, used that instead (I dont recommend applying directly to skin).

Later in the day, i realized I had forgotten my shoes for cross country, and the tape was constricting my feet a bit, so I cut it off, sucked it up and ran barefoot. Would have run the rest of high school totally barefoot after that day if not for the racing guidelines and my PE teacher insisting I wear shoes.
 
Labor Day 2014. No-one was at the gym. I had been trying out VFF was a proxy for being almost barefoot. Since I was a kid, I secretly wanted to be barefoot. So, on that Labor Day, I ventured out into my neighborhood and walked and ran for a couple of miles. Of course, I wound up with several blisters on the soles of my feet that took a week or so to heal. I liked the experience enough to keep trying. To my surprise, over a year and a half later, I am running barefoot on a regular basis. Most weekends, I am barefoot exclusively as I go about my business. I still have my insecurities about being the neighborhood oddball, but it just feels great! BRS and the Lake Merritt Meetup provides support and a sense of community.
 
I have vivid memories of my first barefoot experience.
It was early September 2009, a nice warm spring day.
I put my shoes on for a 10km run. My shoes had orthotics in to 'correct' my running. All my runs start with running to warm up then after a kilometer of shin pain I would stop to rub the shins, stretch the muscles and hope that would allow me to run without too much pain.
I was full of hope on this spring day that I would run and the shins would be ok and I could run without much pain.
It wasn't the case, in less that 500m the shin pain was intense and each footstep made it worse. The frustration was so intense it almost brought me to tears.
I undid my shoes, took my socks off and started walking back. As I walked the pain started to ease so I thought I would try running a few hundred metres. My feet ached a bit because the had been weakened by the orthotics over the years but the pain in my shins stopped. I then made the connection.
The rest is history.

Neil