I have been following the recent craze in barefoot running pretty closely, but I haven’t yet jumped into it myself. I have two main concerns, the first is that it seems a new running fad comes along every couple of years and takes (especially the online) world by storm. Chi-running, pose method, whatever. Barefoot running definitely seems to make more sense, but the risk of injury also seems higher. Second, I’m a larger runner running in an urban enviroment (currently weighing in at 188 pounds) and I think that while the body may have been built to run barefoot, my unshod ancestors where almost surely a lot lighter… and not running on pavement.

Still, I’m curious. This thing is definitely getting big. All the online message boards I look at have sections devoted to barefoot running, and this weekend, when I watched the Marine Corp marathon (a friend’s brother was running, and he finished in 3:33!) in the pack that was on pace to finish around the 3:30 mark I saw two guys in vibrams, and one completely barefoot. That definitely peaked my interest. People are running marathons, and they are running them pretty fast, with no shoes. Maybe I should give this a closer look.

Oh, and to show you how mainstream this has gotten, here’s (another) article mentioning barefoot running in the New York Times. And here’s a video of google founder Sergey Brin talking smart while wearing his vibrams.