A few tools have proven to be particularly useful in my running life. Perhaps another time I will discuss the role my treadmill played in changing my exercise routines, and I will probably repeatedly give props to my heart rate monitor and how that tool has allowed me to take my running to a level I had not previously anticipated. But today, I’d like to discuss my favorite tool that has transformed my running: Vibram FiveFingers shoes.
In September 2009, the radio show All Things Considered did a piece on the emerging trend of barefoot running and the shoes that were becoming popular in response. It didn’t strike me as something that I needed to go out to act upon right away, but I guess I filed the information away somewhere for later use. The next July, as I was accumulating supplies for a mission trip to Mexico that I was anticipating, I decided that I needed to procure a pair of shower shoes. Seizing the opportunity, I decided to take advantage of my “need” and acquire for myself a pair of VFFs to use in Mexico as my bathroom shoes.
Allow me to inform you: VFFs make poor shower shoes. Especially when you first get them, they are not easy to put on. Also, though they do dry out, it is not quickly enough so that, after showering in them at the end of the day, you would want to put them on your feet to run to the baño in the middle of the night. I ended up grifting my tent-partners’ shoes for those starry jaunts across the camp.
Soon after Mexico, I brought my VFF KSOs (“keep stuff out,” a model that covers the top of the foot) to Destin to be my beach running shoe. Again, they fell short of my expected use. Once they became wet, they were very irritating to my feet. By the time I totally overdid my beach run in Destin, I was carrying my VFFs, preferring instead to run through the stinking algae that lined the beaches at that time in my bare feet. Strike two for the VFFs.
At some point soon thereafter, however, I started using VFFs on my treadmill. I really liked the feel of the run that they offered. VFFs let you feel connected to your running surface in a way that nothing else can. Also, it was quickly apparent, they changed my gait. I’m not an experienced runner, but the extent to which I was running differently was noticeable. Now that I know more about the mechanics of what I’m doing, I know that running in VFFs forces you to run closer to the front of your foot and shorten your stride. Also, in isolating each toe, you allow them to participate differently in your stride. This significantly increases agility.
Vibrams became my daily running shoe. But it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I began to understand the full benefit conferred by these shoes. After the birth of my daughter, I switched my running time from midday at my lunch break to first thing in the morning. This change allowed me to get to work early and regularly take afternoons off to spend with family. This is also when I started using my heart rate monitor and running on streets instead of a treadmill. As time rolled on and days grew shorter, I found myself running in pitch dark most mornings. And, while the VFFs allow me to feel connected to the road, they also connected me to rocks and burrs and whatever else was on the street that I was unable to see in the dark. It seemed to me that a conventional running shoe would address this problem.
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Let me give a little background at this point. I changed much about my life in 2002 and 2003. It started when I broke up with a long-time girlfriend. Seeking a personal renaissance, I joined a gym and started exercising daily. At that time I was addicted to prescription stimulants and was a rather emaciated figure, weighing in at maybe 120 pounds at just over 5’9”. I moved to South Carolina, re-introduced myself to G-d, broke my drug addiction, and I did what I could to maintain a decent exercise schedule. In a sea of gym equipment, I found myself gravitating to the treadmill. I never asked anyone how best to make use of the thing -- just hopped on, hit the buttons that seemed good, and got going. For several years, this entailed speed walking at steep variable inclines. I enjoyed the workouts. It had been many years since I had exercised, and I relished the difficulty of the process. Self-discipline has long been one of my strong motivating drives, and at that point in my life, I directed my self-discipline toward exercise.
But, as I have said, I was in the dark on what I was doing. My only advice came from the treadmill itself and its programs. Within a year, I was experiencing knee pain more or less constantly. (My years of sitting in full lotus position, which was where I had directed my self-discipline in the previous decade, were certainly of no help in this matter.) I went to an orthopedist for consultation. He diagnosed me with medial synovial plica irritation, if memory serves me right, and suggested that arthroscopic surgery would be the best way to treat the pain. I was uninsured at the time, so the arthroscopic surgery was out of the question. I decided that I could bear the pain -- for a while, anyways.
Eventually, I began to change my workouts so that I wasn’t on such a steep incline. This helped my knees, but significantly lowered the intensity of my workouts. Over the next several years, I experimented with different types of workout to keep intensity high while not beating up my knees.
When I got my VFFs, something inside me said, “game on!” I greatly increased the intensity of my running.
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My understanding is that it takes some time to adjust to any new pair of running shoes. When I got my conventional running shoes (Saucony Progrid Kinvara), I took it very easy on the roads for a couple of weeks. Then I turned it up a bit. That week I found myself walking differently. I also noticed that when I wanted to stand still, I looked to find a position that would allow me to keep my knees bent rather than locking them straight. After a couple of days of this, it started to become clear that what I was feeling was quite familiar. Yes, this was very similar to the pain that I used to live with, day in, day out. I had entirely forgotten about knee problems. I had been running long, hard, hilly runs for months, and had never given a single thought to my knees. Now that I was adjusting to a conventional shoe, the old pain was back and very real. It seems that there is something of a slingshot effect on joints when you have padding in shoes. The impact itself is initially lessened, but on return, it compresses the joint more than it would if you didn’t pad the impact to begin with. The padding of the conventional shoe was making my knees work harder than the padding-free VFFs would.
Once I began to put two and two together, I began to explore my other “barefoot shoe” options. As it turns out, Vibram makes a range of shoes, some of which are designed for specific activities. On reading reviews of the Vibram FiveFingers Bikila, it seemed like it might be right for me. Indeed, my Bikilas rock my world. I can’t speak highly enough about how Bikilas have opened up my running options. I got them in time for my second beach trip of the summer, and did my best to put them to the test. I ran two 10k, two 5k, and a 20k run that week. And really, I haven’t thought about my knees on those runs until now.
Bravo, Vibram! Three cheers for making a product that can transform a life!
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