Fivefingers: beyond the first week.

Our first week wearing Vibram Fivefingers made for an interesting experience, and while we intended to post an immediate followup, the delay may have been fortuitous, since we’re now four months in and have more insight into the journey we embarked on. The shoes look no less weird now than they did back in March, but we’re substantially more comfortable in them now, and our distaste for “conventional” shoes is now less theory, and more practically-grounded.

Transitioning.

We talked about muscle soreness in our calves before, and while the soreness dissipated, we didn’t expect the second wave to be so severe. This followed our first one-mile run, which we probably shouldn’t have completed in the first place. They say that barefoot running should be taken on gradually, with only five minute runs at first, moving on to ten minutes a week or two later, etc. We, however, we stupid enough to will ourselves through a whole mile, which in our case, took longer than five minutes, halfway through to which, our calves were already asking us to stop. For some reason, we were determined to complete the big 1.0, however, and when we finally stopped, our calves decided to swear off running for another several days. The resulting calf soreness easily lasted a week and a half, and was akin to us doing strenuous calf exercises, with weights, to the point of exhaustion – that’s how bad the soreness was.

Interestingly, the muscle soreness we’ve experienced since has been somewhat different. As our calves strengthened, next up was soreness in our achilles tendon. More recently, without a solid routine of running, but still wearing Fivefingers for walking around, our more recent jogs haven’t caused more than occasional light soreness on the sides of our calves.

We’ve also experienced (we believe to a slowly lessening extent), a pain somewhere near our fifth metatarsals when we get up in the morning and first begin to walk around. We understand that this is a common phenomenon with barefoot runners either starting out, and perhaps not easing into it quite as slowly as we should; barefoot runners tend to land their feet on the side of the forefoot, which places pressure on an area we’re not used to putting much pressure on. Our bones and tendons here need to built up their strength, so this is likely the pain we’re feeling. Microfractures, for example, are common because of this pounding, and we’re guessing that our early morning pain may be related to this. After several seconds, the pain dissipates and we’re fine the rest of the day.

We also mentioned previously that landing on the balls of our feet caused some small amount of pain during our first week wearing Fivefingers. We can now confirm that this was temporary. Indeed, not only does one’s body toughen up after running more naturally, but you really do learn to run again. Part of this relearning is subconscious – you just sort of fall into it. The rest requires some amount of conscious effort to change your habits, and at some later point the subconscious may take over until you’re running like a kid again. For us, we’re still grappling with some aspects of running barefoot, primarily as it concerns weight – we tend to land with “heavy” feet, and haven’t yet mastered the elastic bounce that barefoot runners tend to have.

Still awkward, too, is walking fast. At a slow pace, walking isn’t changed much, as landing with our heel landing first feels fine. It’s when we increase our pace that we realize we’re heel-stomping, but we’re not quite moving fast enough yet for a mid-foot or fore-foot landing to feel natural. At this pace, we’re somewhere between worlds, and we either look stupid wrestling with a gait we’re not used to, else we suck up the heel slams and just move on. A good part of this is because strides are shorter when barefoot, and when we walk fast, we’re used to increasing our stride for added speed, and this doesn’t work well for us in Fivefingers.

The wear.

We were originally concerned somewhat that the lack of padding with Fivefingers would make longer jaunts less comfortable, but to the contrary, we’ve noticed no more discomfort than standing for long periods in normal shoes. If anything, the fact that more of our feet can move in Fivefingers makes wearing them for longer periods less annoying than wearing the foot cages we were previously used to.

Temperature was a problem during March when we weren’t running, and when autumn approaches, we hope to have a better arsenal for dealing with this. Since purchasing our KSOs, we’ve since picked up a pair of Mocs that replaced our indoors slippers, and recently, we bought a pair of Treks to class things up a tad; the kangaroo leather of the Treks makes them slightly more fashionable (assuming you can make gorilla feet fashionable, that is). We hope that wearing socks with our Treks will both make them warmer, thus allowing us to extend our Fivefingers season an extra month or two, and also make them stink less than our KSOs.

The stink, as reported by many other Fivefingers users, isn’t fun. It may not be worse than running in sneakers barefoot, but it’s the definite downside to not wearing socks with a shoe. This means that we need to wash our KSOs at least once every two weeks, and more if we wear it beyond just working out. We bought our Treks for most non-athletic wear (outside of hiking), but we may start wearing socks with the KSOs as the weather cools as well. We’d strongly recommend this if you’re squeamish about foot odor and don’t want to wash your Fivefingers pretty routinely.

Another reason for the Treks was to take on more adventurous hikes in the future. We hope to replace our hiking boots with the Treks once we develop our muscles and feet up some more, and the added traction of Trek soles will be useful. While we can see using the KSOs for light hiking, the razor sipped soles don’t stand up to slippery rocks, and simply don’t offer adequate traction when scrambling around. That’s been an issue for us when playing around rivers, where slippery rocks are plentiful. Arguably, the Flows may be a better buy for these situations, and it begs the question as to why Vibram hasn’t brought the Flow Treks to the United States, as they’re arguably the perfect backcountry hiking shoe for minimalists. Until they do, the basic Trek will have to suffice.

The linky.

We wanted to post some linkage for would-be, or new, Fivefingers wearers. The first link addresses long pants dragging on the ground because of a shorter sole profile on the Fivefingers. The trick is to attack a small s-biner to the loop on the read of the Fivefingers, and sliding the edge of your pant-leg into the other end of the s-biner. This keeps your pants from scraping against the ground and even getting caught under your heel, and it’s barely noticeable without close inspection.

The second link is a video on barefoot running techniques, sponsored by Terra Plana, another company who produces minimalist running shoes. While other videos on the topic exist, this one is more practically-oriented, suggesting exercises to promote better running techniques before one gets their actual run on.

The addiction.

We’ve almost averaged one pair of Fivefingers per month since buying our first pair. The model lineup, while expanding, isn’t likely to convince us to get yet another pair anytime soon, but the differences between some of the models are important to note. For those considering jumping on the bandwagon, we still maintain that the KSO is a great middle-line option, or the Sprint if you’re not fond of the extra mesh the KSO offers. Unless you only want a Fivefingers shoe for a very specific purpose, like running or yoga, then you can’t go wrong with the KSO/Sprint.

It’s true that we hate wearing “regular” shoes now. Not only do they feel cramped, but the extra height of the heel, and whatever padding it contains, is something we now see as a burden rather than a comfort. In fact, even wearing sandals now fees uncomfortable.

And, of course, we find ourselves attracted to unpaved surfaces, be it dirt, grass, or gravel. Something about feeling the ground beneath you becomes exciting, instead of just bulldozing forward with blocks on your feet and finding anything but flat asphalt annoying. The only thing we’re missing now is a similar shoe that can get away by being seen in a professional environment, and that’s a trick we’re not sure even Vibram can manage just yet.

Tagged as: gear, mendax.org, physical jerks