Vibram Five Fingers
I received my new
Vibram Five Fingers yesterday. I used to read the Ultra Run Bike Vegan's blog (Deanna, the author, was in the first Race Across The West) all of her running was done barefoot. I'm not sure why she's not blogging anymore, but she was the inspiration for me to try the Five Fingers. She'd be appalled that I'm not actually running barefoot and that I spent money on the Five Fingers, but I wanted to ease into this.
I went for a short run yesterday, to try them out. I went 4/10's of a mile, but I could feel the difference immediately. Years of running in shoes has taught me to land on my heel, and that's painful.
Speaking of years of running in shoes...I ran track in high school, and that was the last serious running I've done. When I moved down to Alexandria, I went for a run around the block (it was a big block). Halfway around the block, I started feeling pain in my left leg, on the outside, from the knee up. Since then, any running has brought out that pain and it's even occurred on some long rides. I've gone to chiropractors and they've said, my body's out of alignment. I've talked to doctors about it and they say to stretch it. I've stretched it, and it still happens. Back in 2007, as I was traveling through Colorado in the Race Across America, a two person female team caught up with me and they loaned me their massage therapist for 10 minutes. That 10 minutes fixed the problem and it hasn't been back since.
After Deanna's posts about barefoot running, I thought if I ever ran again, I'd give it a try. That triathlon in September means I have to be able to run a 5K. I think my lifetime distance record on foot is 2 miles.
