Greetings all. I live in northern Cincinnati, by Kings Island, to anyone that knows the area. I have ran off and on for years. My longest run was a 16 miler in 2002 training for the Country Music Marathon, where I hurt my foot and had to quit training for the marathon.
I have ran off and on since then but after playing soccer from childhood threw my late 20s and early 30s, to running, my legs are pretty beat up, like alot of us. I bought some new "expensive" running shoes back in the spring from a local running store to help with my overpronation and the pain in my right foot never ceased, at times it is worse now. I got frustrated with running even though I love it. I get the same pain when on the elipitical with those shoes on, so I gave up and bought a nice hybrid bike this summer. Biking is fun as a crosstraining exercise, but I am still a runner at heart. Of course, I am horribly out of shape now.
Then while reading a blog about the TSA body scan's I saw a mention of someone wearing VFFs and had no idea what they were, but thought they were cool and different. I went and bought some partly to agitate the wife since she though they were so ugly and also after reading about the idealogy of minimalist shoes may help my foot pain. I used to be really active on RW forums a few years ago, so I was familiar with the concept.
Reading around I saw a few references to Born to Run on various blogs and decided to download it to my Kindle and read it on vacation over Thanksgiving. I also saw warnings right away to not run in VFFs because your feet need to learn to run again since I was a healstriker. I have spent the last week or so aborbing as much information as I can. I ordered Barefoot running by Michael Sandler and have been reading Jason's Barefoot University website and will probably order his book also.
I heeded all of the warning and have not ran in my VFFs yet. I wear them around the house and to go out shopping, etc. I ran my first barefoot .5 miles on Monday and it felt great, it was a warm day at 58 F, I wanted to go further but was cautious per this forum. Of course, it was in the dark during my son's basketball practice, so I ran in the church parking lot with lots of lights and only hit one larger pebble in the dark. Note to self: running barefoot in dark is not recommended, but I wanted to get in a run. My feet were a little sore yesterday, but not bad at all. The best part was that my right foot and knees did not hurt at all during my run.
I am going to do my second run today, but since there is snow on the ground I will probably do another .5 miles on my treadmill tonight.
I love reading all this information, the website here is set up brilliantly with all of the featured blogs and articles. I also have enjoyed reading the profiles of the runners.
Happy Running,
Barefoot Gamer
I have ran off and on since then but after playing soccer from childhood threw my late 20s and early 30s, to running, my legs are pretty beat up, like alot of us. I bought some new "expensive" running shoes back in the spring from a local running store to help with my overpronation and the pain in my right foot never ceased, at times it is worse now. I got frustrated with running even though I love it. I get the same pain when on the elipitical with those shoes on, so I gave up and bought a nice hybrid bike this summer. Biking is fun as a crosstraining exercise, but I am still a runner at heart. Of course, I am horribly out of shape now.
Then while reading a blog about the TSA body scan's I saw a mention of someone wearing VFFs and had no idea what they were, but thought they were cool and different. I went and bought some partly to agitate the wife since she though they were so ugly and also after reading about the idealogy of minimalist shoes may help my foot pain. I used to be really active on RW forums a few years ago, so I was familiar with the concept.
Reading around I saw a few references to Born to Run on various blogs and decided to download it to my Kindle and read it on vacation over Thanksgiving. I also saw warnings right away to not run in VFFs because your feet need to learn to run again since I was a healstriker. I have spent the last week or so aborbing as much information as I can. I ordered Barefoot running by Michael Sandler and have been reading Jason's Barefoot University website and will probably order his book also.
I heeded all of the warning and have not ran in my VFFs yet. I wear them around the house and to go out shopping, etc. I ran my first barefoot .5 miles on Monday and it felt great, it was a warm day at 58 F, I wanted to go further but was cautious per this forum. Of course, it was in the dark during my son's basketball practice, so I ran in the church parking lot with lots of lights and only hit one larger pebble in the dark. Note to self: running barefoot in dark is not recommended, but I wanted to get in a run. My feet were a little sore yesterday, but not bad at all. The best part was that my right foot and knees did not hurt at all during my run.
I am going to do my second run today, but since there is snow on the ground I will probably do another .5 miles on my treadmill tonight.
I love reading all this information, the website here is set up brilliantly with all of the featured blogs and articles. I also have enjoyed reading the profiles of the runners.
Happy Running,
Barefoot Gamer