Five Froggy Fingers

I recently fin­ished read­ing the incred­i­bly eye-opening and delight­fully inspir­ing book Born to Run, by Christo­pher McDougall. In it, Chris intro­duces us to Bare­foot Ted, a big man with a big mouth and an equally big heart who used to have ter­ri­ble foot pains that crip­pled his run­ning abil­ity. He began to walk with­out shoes and soon exper­i­mented with run­ning sans shoes. Before long, he was rack­ing up some major miles in the hills around LA, not expe­ri­enc­ing any more foot pain. Some­where along the line, Bare­foot Ted came across some Vibram Five Fin­gers shoes and tried them out. They are basi­cally a mesh sock with rub­ber on the bot­tom, offer­ing a lit­tle pro­tec­tion from sharp edges and rough sur­faces, but no arch sup­port. They also have areas for each toe, like foot mitten.

Well, it was love right out of the gait for Bare­foot Ted. In fact, he fell so head over heels with the way they felt that he called the CEO of Vibram to ask the com­pany to spon­sor him in his upcom­ing ultra­ma­rathons. Hav­ing been designed for more sta­ble activ­i­ties like kayak­ing, the CEO blew Ted off. How­ever, being the per­sis­tent one, Ted con­vinced him to at least try run­ning in the Five Fin­gers. Well, after a short jaunt, Ted received a call and a sponsorship.

Fast for­ward to the pub­li­ca­tion of Born to Run and the Vibram Five Fin­gers are being embraced by all sorts of run­ners and out­door enthu­si­asts alike. Curi­ous to feel first-hand what all the fuss was about, I decided to give them a try. Nat­u­rally, I headed to Zom­bie Run­ning in Palo Alto, one of the pre­mier trail and ultra run­ning stores in the coun­try (they also have excel­lent espresso and cold-pressed cof­fee, expertly crafted by the owner, Don — trail run­ning and espresso…heaven). Turns out that I wasn’t the only per­son that wanted to check out the Five Fin­gers. There must have been 15 peo­ple who tried them on this after­noon (I spent about 3 hours there, chat­ting, read­ing, and sip­ping an Amer­i­cano). There has been such a rush on the shoes that they only had a few sizes avail­able and a wait­ing list, with at least a two month wait for the black KSOs!

I was able to try on a pair that was a lit­tle too big, but close enough to give me a sense for what they feel like. First off, it took me five min­utes to get all of my toes in the right holes, as this was the first time in which their place­ment in a shoe actu­ally mat­tered. Once I had cor­ralled all 10 lit­tle pig­gies into their pens, I took them for a walk around the store. I have to say, even after read­ing so much about them in Born to Run, online, and build­ing up my expec­ta­tions for what they would feel like, they felt quite good. The cool sen­sa­tion from the tiled floor was the first thing I noticed. I hadn’t had that sen­sa­tion walk­ing in. I also noticed the hard­ness of the floor, though not in a painful way. I was sim­ply aware that I was stand­ing on a hard sur­face. After a few more steps in the Five Fin­gers I felt a dif­fer­ent feel­ing all together. Swelling from within was a simul­ta­ne­ous sense of free­dom and alert­ness. I was more present, in the moment, con­nected to my envi­ron­ment. I was alive. The last time I remem­ber feel­ing that way was going skinny dip­ping in cold pool of water in Yosemite.

While a few strides around a store in a slightly too large pair of Vibram Five Fin­gers is cer­tainly not enough of an expe­ri­ence to war­rant a review let alone a ver­dict, I am even more intrigued. All of the argu­ments for why these shoes would be bet­ter for my feet than most any­thing else out there make sense, but I will need to give them a full try. I’ll let you know when that hap­pens and how it goes.

Here is a clip of Christo­pher McDougall, Author of Born to Run, talk­ing about wear­ing his Five Fingers:

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