My shoes are awesome

Kitty asks

so obsessed with those...shoes?


i saw a guy wearing them in singapore and decided that i MUST have a pair, but jonny was all dismissive and, "they'd smell so bad." but... but! i love them! do they smell? WHAT ARE THEY LIKE? what is life like when you're that person who wears those shoes? when i saw the tourist in singapore i said, "he must be french."

can't you go barefoot running on nice grass? keeps you run-fit and allows for "grounding" or "earthing"...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XumPQLTzPWI


please note: i have family members who wear crystals and say things like, "i really like his energy," and they are all, "i'm just gonna go walk barefoot on the beach, i need to earth, you know?" so maybe grounding / earthing is one of those new-agey faux-physics-y things and it's all nonsense and i have no idea? it can't hurt, though.

The Five Finger shoes get a lot of questions (warning - clip contains rude words)

They're comfortable to wear and they feel good to walk around in but they're hard to put on, especially at first. You need to train your toes to go into the correct toe, and if you try to rush and pull them on quickly you end up wedging two toes into one hole - which isn't comfortable. Mine don't smell, but then again a) I've not used them much and b) I lived in a house with four other climbers for 5 years so I don't notice that kind of thing. There are lots of jokes out there about 'how do you get the smell out of your vibrams' so I guess they will get worse over time, although you could wear Injinji socks. They also dry pretty quickly so you could wash them regularly & easily.

 

The main problem with them is that you suddenly become 'that guy'. It's hard to wear them in public and not feel like you're an attention-seeking freak - or worse, French. I took them down to Melbourne a couple of years ago for Skate Melbourne and still remember the utterly disgusted stare a suited-up businessman gave me as I walked along Swanston St. 

 

They're also apparently the cause of a lot of 'barefoot' injuries. The sole is fairly thin, but still thick enough to take the sting out of running on tarmac. Which is good in some ways, but also allows you to run further than you would with no shoes at all and that can lead to injuries. You run barefoot with a different gait and use different muscles - more much work from the calf - and tender soles mean that you naturally limit your runs to distances that are less likely to cause injury (I'm up to 600m now! Woot!). Vibrams take away that feedback loop. I've read that if you can't run the distance barefoot, you shouldn't be running it in Vibrams.

 

Running on grass is also a good idea, but again 'they' recommend you start on tarmac as the feedback to your body is more immediate. You know if you heelstrike, very quickly, and you adapt your gait to suit. Sand or grass is more lenient. Besides, every time I've tried to ground myself & connect with the earth at out local park I end up stumbling into a patch of bindis, getting swarmed by inch-long ants or being bitten by something too small to see but which still leaves my feet itching for days. Over here, tarmac is safer.....