Born to be Barefoot

After reading Born to Run during the majority of my flight from Tucson in April, I did the smallest amount of research possible and then ordered barefoot running shoes online. They’re called vibram five-fingers and they look a bit like alien shoes-- I’ve thought about this quite a lot-- mostly because we’re not used to the fact that we actually have five toes. Seeing them all splayed out there encased in black nylon (or bright red, mossy green, even sunshine yellow) looks strange and sort of flips my stomach like I’m trying to politely avert my gaze from some abnormality. After all, since the advent of cushy heels and gel pods, what exactly are toes for? The annoyance of clipping nails, the weirdness of what gets jammed between them, the frustration and agony of smashing them against doorframes and table legs.

In fact, its been a long time since I’ve had something good to say about my feet in general. When I was a kid, I waited for shoeless summers with a similar intensity as Christmas morning. The first sign came when even grown ups abandoned puffy winter coats, then okay, yes, we can wear short sleeved shirts and finally! the shorts get unpacked from dusty boxes, and last, but certainly not least came the shoes: off with the shoes, bare feet all around! One summer I became so used to treading around without shoes that I walked six blocks to a babysitting job without even noticing there was nothing on my feet.
And yet, somewhere along the way, everything changed. There are many things that may have let to the hating of my feet, but if I had to pin in down to one experience, my guess would be the horror of skating in 3rd grade gym class.

Six weeks out of the year they heaved in great wheeled cubbies full of shoes to fit the wide spectrum of sizes necessary to house the wide spectrum of grade school feet. Think about it for a second: do you remember the third grader whose hands and feet were the size of Barbie shoes? The one who towered above you with dolphin heraches thundering down the stairs? The blessed middle-sized child no one remembers at all. And then they made a spectical of the whole thing by calling you up by size. Size 5 and under, you can retrieve your skates. Okay, now size 6 and 7. Anyone else? Oh yeah, size 7 and up. And three of us would stand in the sea of petite hands struggling to pull on and lace skates over small and normal feet. All seemed to halt as they turned to look up. There’s a size above 7? Really? How? And there we were, apologetically running to the last cubby by the wall, pulling out our clownish two-tone red and green skates (the only colors in that size) and ducking our faces (now the same color as our skates) down to begin the slow attempt at fastening these massive (do they have to be on wheels?!) bodies of canvas and laces to our snow-sled size feet.

Then on a camping trip with my dad I fell over a rogue tent stake and gashed the big toe on my left foot. The toe has healed, but the nail never did.

Then when I started running, they started to smell; am I to blame?!

Then in college when I started running more than sitting by the pool, I got a horrible ring around my ankle: the dreaded sock tan. I stopped wearing sandals. I hated the sight of my feet. And thus we have the present condition. I am flat footed. My feet are white as dolphins and twice the size. My toenail is cracked and discolored. Why, why, why and how could I ever learn to love my feet?

But then I read about barefoot running, and it took me about two paragraphs to be persuaded. Feet are surprising complex (housing as much as 25% of the bones in your body)not to mention architectually brilliant with toes and arches that all function in special ways giving us the ability to walk, run, balance, grip and jump. And yet we, particularly as ahtletes, have spent the last 30 years encasing them in increasingly complex imitations of an already complex, functional form. As Chris McDougall points out, no architect in her right mind would build supports beneath an archway if trying to maintain the integrity of the design. Even a child could deduce building with blocks (though probably without being able to articulate why) that the strengh of the arch comes when force is applied from above. So this is what I take from Chris’ conclusion: I have spent the last fifteen years (with increasing intensity as I have begun running more seriously) actually weakening my already almost non-existant arches. Ack!

Now that I have my vibrams, however, something of my childhood is coming back. I remember the freedom and sweetness of relying on my toes, of loving what my feet can do, how spry I feel, how able to balance and hop and go at a moment’s notice. Last weekend we went camping, and tide-pooling I found my greatest pleasure came not from the star-fish we uncovered the size of a house cat, but instead from the way my toes held and engaged the ground beneath me. Climbing, hopping, balancing, loving them all the (substantial) way from heal to grippy toe.