Some of you might like an update on my experiment with Vibram Five Fingers, so here goes. Per the advice of, well, everyone, I tried to start off slowly, as I described a few weeks ago. On my first run, my calves became really tight and sore because my heel hardly hit the ground and I pushed off with my calves, so they worked like crazy the entire mile. I went extremely fast, but it wasn’t a good long-term plan. So I made a point to relax my feet, avoid pushing off with my calves, and let my heels touch on every step.

In that way I worked up to 1.5 miles and then 2 miles. My calves felt much better after that. As in my first VFF run, I ran faster with less effort. Fantastic. However, I started getting a bit of pain on top of my feet, a sign of excessive stress on the metatarsal bones in my feet. Partly because it’s so fun and easy, some runners who get into minimalist/barefoot running do too much too soon and develop stress fractures in their metatarsals. So I decided to strap on my trusty Brooks Adrenalines for the Family Promise 5k on Saturday instead of pushing my luck.

The race went GREAT. Even though I ran after working all night and should have been tired, I set a personal record at 23:44. My feet felt fine, and I felt only a minor ache in my left knee toward the end. This tells me that my form has improved since wearing the VFFs and/or that my body is getting stronger.

Then on Monday, I slipped on my VFFs and went for a run. Almost immediately I felt the same pain at the top of my right foot. Hmm, this isn’t good. I stayed a bit sore for a few days despite not running at all, so I returned to my favorite podiatrists (Foot and Ankle Associates of North Texas, or FAANT). I feared the worst – two walking casts and 6-8 weeks of questions, lectures, and I-told-you-sos. However, the x-rays were negative. The doctor said to lay off running in the VFFs for a while, but running half my normal distance in my Adrenalines would be OK. I skipped back to my car (not really) and went straight to the trail. Two miles. No foot pain. Booyah.

I return to Dr. Crane in about four weeks to see how I’m doing. In the meantime, I’ll stick to the Adrenalines for running, try to strengthen my feet, and see what happens.

Is it frustrating to hear about all my injuries? Perhaps for some of you. I understand. You might wonder why I don’t just give up. The reason is simple: as some wise person once said, I would rather burn out than rust out. I would rather use my body up trying to keep it healthy than let it slowly atrophy and end up overweight, diabetic, and on the heart transplant list twenty years from now. Knees are easier to replace than hearts.