People's reactions when you run

Two nights ago, I encountered a neighbor and his daughter (toddler) who looked at me and said "Hey! Bare feet!". It was my first barefoot comment.

Maybe it'll have an effect on her...

This has happened to me very often, too. Kids comment what they see instantly, especially uncommon things.

But they don´t necessarily stop there. Because they also imitate a lot. Almost always when I enter the playground with my little daughter we take off our shoes sooner or later, if it´s not too cold. She really likes that and mostly it´s her who takes off shoes first. And then it usually takes only a couple of minutes until other kids copy us. If you want to infect others with the barefoot-virus have an immidiate effect on others, go to a playground!

Sadly by doing this we´ve also caused more than one argument between overconcerned parents and their kids. The kids saw us, wanted to take off their shoes and the parents freaked out. I remember one mother shouting: "If you don´t put on your shoes right now, we´ll go home!".

Luckily things like this have happend only rarely until now. Most parents seem to be cool and allow their kids to try something new.
 
This has happened to me very often, too. Kids comment what they see instantly, especially uncommon things.
But they don´t necessarily stop there. Because they also imitate a lot. Almost always when I enter the playground with my little daughter we take off our shoes sooner or later, if it´s not too cold. She really likes that and mostly it´s her who takes off shoes first. And then it usually takes only a couple of minutes until other kids copy us. If you want to infect others with the barefoot-virus have an immidiate effect on others, go to a playground!

Sadly by doing this we´ve also caused more than one argument between overconcerned parents and their kids. The kids saw us, wanted to take off their shoes and the parents freaked out. I remember one mother shouting: "If you don´t put on your shoes right now, we´ll go home!".

Luckily things like this have happend only rarely until now. Most parents seem to be cool and allow their kids to try something new.
So sad that parents get upset about this. My wife now just worries that my son will get something stuck in his foot as kids, toddlers especially, don't watch where they are going. She is being flexible with me about minshoes for him which is fine though. I am very picky about the shoes that go on his feet and am even now allowed to let her parents know what will and will not go on his feet.:D
 
I ran at the first Boston Barefoot running festival yesterday and during the barefoot 5K i heard from a little girl as all of the runners passed " there's another barefoot runner, there's another barefoot runner" as we passed. One woman said as she passed on a bike "barefoot? ouch!". Another yelled from an open window of a van driving through a busy intersection " where's your shoes!" Many other people taking pictures and smilling and i made sure to wave and smile. I ran the 5k in 25:24 and my friend ran it in 25:05. The fastest ran it in 16 minutes which was amazing. The trail was rough with stones and some glass yet no cut feet just a little wear spots from being too pushy. What a great experience. Thanks to all who made this event possible.
 
I heard once long ago:

"Nice shoes!" Of which I replied, "You got a pair too!"
 
I ran at the first Boston Barefoot running festival yesterday and during the barefoot 5K i heard from a little girl as all of the runners passed " there's another barefoot runner, there's another barefoot runner" as we passed.

I love it! I wonder what Linkletter and Cosby would have done with it on Kids Say the Darndest Things.
 
Mostly I just get standard, "wow, she's barefoot" whispered comments or odd looks. But my favorite that I'll get quite often is "are you running barefoot?" I have a fairly hard time not being a smart aleck to that. It seems fairly obvious that that is in fact what I am doing.
 
Maybe word is getting around in the local area or maybe I've just run out of "A"-holes, but this year I have gotten almost exclusively (except the one bitchy neighbor lady) positive comments, thumbs up, etc. compared to a year or so ago when it was about 50% negativity.
 
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I've started running without music, but I still need the earbuds for the E25K run/walk prompts. So as I pass people, they might make comments and think I can't hear them, but when I do I'll just turn back and give a thumbs up or something. The look on their faces would be priceless. :p
 
I had a couple younger runners coming toward me one time and I could see that they spotted my bare feet and were getting ready to make a comment so I beat them to it and said "Wow, you got shoes on!" ....."Doesn't that hurt?" They just laughed.
 
I had a great reaction yesterday. Actually, I was a bad, bad BF runner. I wasn't paying attention and ran right up on a couple in near perfect silence. As I came up next to her she glanced over and leapt sideways about 6 feet. I think maybe she went over her companion but I'm not sure. I was all apologies as I kept on footing it.
 

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