"The Sock Guy"

I have been biding my time, waiting to wear my Vibram FiveFingers to track practice. Each week, I look at them on Tuesday morning and then decide "I'll give it one more week of short slow running in them before ditching my trainers for a full track workout". I must admit that it is mostly because I want to train into this form of running slowly and correctly but partially because of being self conscious of the other 35 or so members of the track club perhaps thinking that I was trying to do something to attract attention to myself.

Today a funny thing happened that I wouldn't have expected. Having been running once a week in the vffs or in my birthday shoes for 3 - 5 miles at a pop, I have apparently reincarnated some muscles in my feet that likely lay dormant for the better part of a decade. These muscles are part of something in my feet supposedly called an "arch" that I never new I had. This arch now has a voice and tells me it doesn't like to be supported by my supportive trainers any longer. It further tells me that if I ignore this plea, it will start to hurt and make me stop running.

I made it halfway through tonight's practice and started to notice a twinge in my left arch. One more lap and I felt it more. I have been injured enough times from running to now be hyper aware of things that start small but seem to get worse. I knew I had to either stop the workout or risk injury, perhaps including the dreaded p.f. I kicked my shoes to the curb and walked along the outside of the track for about 100m. I noticed that my arch didn't hurt at all when walking so I tried light jogging. After another 100m I decided to try and finish the workout in my socks. It was a risk and I'll only know if it was the right decision in the next few days but it was, in a word, wonderful. With each item of the workout I let more and more speed out. It felt so good to ride on the suspension created solely by my legs and feet and cruise almost silently (except for lots of heavy breathing) around the track. Without the extra weight at the end of my legs, my cadence immediately increased and I settled into a comfortable and efficient form. I couldn't help but smile inside as I passed people and could hear them commenting about "the sock guy", or "why is he running in socks" or "I bet that hurts", etc... I wonder if this public display of will help someone else think to themselves, "maybe I could do that", or "I've heard of barefooting, what is it really all about?". That would be cool.

Even though I'm about 95% on the benefits of barefoot/minimalist shoe wagon, there's that extra 5% that lurks waiting for a long term, sufficiently large study to say outright that the logical arguments I've bought into on the subject are legit. In the mean time, I'm continuing on my own study of sample size = 1. Here's hoping I'm right!