cooker

1.5 km mixed surfaces walk to try out new footwear.

Inspired in part by Ridefreemc I went out and treated myself to a pair of Vibram 5 fingers "barefoot" running shoes.

Okay, maybe they're just gimmicky, but the argument for them make sense - we evolved to walk barefoot, and we can speculate that we may have a more efficient and perhaps healthier and more sustainable gait, if we recondtion our feet to function as they are designed to.

On the other hand, perhaps you could argue that shoes are like bicycles - a kind of artificial exoskeleton that we use because it gives us some biomechanical advantage - and of course in the modern world that they offer protection against man-made hazards like broken glass and roof tacks.

In a roundabout way I might also have partly been infuenced by watching Frodo et al. scooting around the Shire or even into Mordor without footwear. I don't recall if they wore boots crossing the mountain passes. Plus, before I got summer jobs I spent weeks barefoot at the family cottage in chidhood summers, on dirt paths and beaches, although we did usually wear shoes if we went into the untrammelled woods. And I always kick off my shoes as soon as I get home and walk around the house barefoot or in socks as it feels more comfortable.

Anyway tonight I walked a 1.5 km loop on concrete, an asphalt path, some crushed rocks, loose gravel, sand, packed dirt, and grass.

It felt weirdly familiar. One heel felt a little tender right from the start but I don't think it got any worse. I only stepped on one acorn-sized rock that hurt a bit, and I realized that if I were actually barefoot I would have been scanning more closely for stuff like that, and need to learn to do so a bit more in these "shoes" than in conventional shoes.

I probably won't try running in them until the coming weekend.