I’ve been on this whole fitness kick, in the hopes that if I start young by the time I’m old I’ll be all fit and sexy and shit, and while unicycling has been fun it’s not exactly a hardcore-awesome “you’re gonna get fit and sexy” sport. Not that I don’t love unicycling and do it every day, but my realization was that I don’t really want to unicycle as much as I, say, want to be able to do parkour or some sort of free running.
When my Kindle left me staring at a $10 copy of “Born to Run
You lock an animal in a cage for it’s entire life and it’s going to die pretty quick (I’ve seen it happen). We lock ourselves in a cage, it’s just called modern life, and while we’re free to move around we can’t really stretch our legs. Maybe this is killing us?
So I bought “Born To Run” and for a while I’d been kicking around the idea of getting some Vibram FiveFingers and trying to run. I’ve always loved running on a treadmill, but the idea of running in reality always seemed really daunting or otherwise dangerous (runners injuries and the like). My last public road unicycle ride, which resulted in getting rocks thrown at me, made me feel kind of like unicycling is probably not what I want to be doing distance training on if I am looking to just be left alone. Perhaps if I’m just running, no one will bother me, and if I do that running up in Turnbull Canyon on the trails, there just won’t be anyone to bother me at all.
I didn’t know the FiveFingers KSO Trek existed. It’s composed mostly of kangaroo leather, which is incredibly soft and breathable. The sole is hard rubber with 2mm of EVA foam (most shoes have an EVA sole these days, at least skate shoes do, it’s a very firm but resilient foam and you can see it as the gray parts of the KSO Trek’s sole). It’s built for trail running, so I figured it’d be a good intermediary layer for learning how to barefoot run or otherwise run in thinner FiveFingers. The fact that they came in a lovely brown, my favoritest color ever, kind of sealed the deal.
My ankle, it is white
$125 later I had myself some FiveFingers. I’ve been wearing them for eleven days. I was going to wait until I’d been wearing them for two weeks before I’d write this review, but I’m pretty comfortable in them right now so I might as well.
First up, if you don’t know anything about me, I’m a pretty active guy. I unicycle pretty much every day (trials mostly on a 20″ wheel). I like to go on hikes that lead off trail or up the sides of hills you’re probably not supposed to just run up the side of as fast as you can so you don’t slide down to your death. I’m also on my feet most of the day at work in a warehouse, moving shit around, or unloading trucks and containers (which involves a lot of jumping around on stuff Prince of Persia status). So, needless to say, I guess I’m pretty demanding of my feet.
I’m also an extreme introvert (maybe not that extreme but sometimes I feel like I am) so the first time I put these shoes on my feet I was suddenly beset with a massive dose of self-consciousness. I went to go eat, and I couldn’t really bring myself to get out of the car to go inside to get food. I kept thinking I looked ridiculous with these weird shoes on my feet… all pale bare ankle contrasted with brown, individual toesies. “Everyone is going to stare and ask me questions!” I agonized internally.
After a day or two of wearing them, though, I got over this. A cute girl asked me about them. A black woman asked me about them, and then talked herself into all sorts of reasons she wouldn’t want them. I’ll hear whispers (“Those are those weird shoes…” “Look at those things…”) but most people won’t actually ask me about them. I think this is the Los Angeles Effect where no one wants to actually talk to anyone else.
But how do they feel? At first they made my feet hurt. When you walk in normal shoes all the padding in the heel makes you want to slam down and roll off your heel, but if you do those in these FiveFingers which have no padding at all, you end up with really sore heels. So you adapt, you step lighter, but your heels still hurt. You adapt further, and start striking the ground softly with the ball of your foot, but this makes you feel like you’re walking like a retard. So what do you do?
I’m not really sure. I’ll just say that walking in these KSO Treks is not the most comfortable experience. It’s not less comfortable than other shoes, really, or at least I hope eventually it will be when my poor little sensitive feet acclimate. I figure that’s what it is, really, that my babied feet need time to get used to all this abuse. My feet have never really felt the full impact of ground before, so they’re probably being a little bitchy.
Shoesies on a tire...
What gives me hope is that running in these came totally naturally to me and feels great. I’ve always been pretty light on my feet when I’m running, never really slamming my heels into the ground, and the few times I’ve found myself running barefoot in my life I’ve always been amazed at how fast I feel. It’s just all about midfoot-ball of your foot striking, or at least it seems to be. Feet are springy, you can spring off of them. Boom, running.
But aside from yesterday, I haven’t done any real running in them. I learned yesterday that running is hard. I set out to run a couple miles, maybe three, thinking that my fitness level was pretty high since I unicycle so much and do other stuff. What I found out, though, is that running is fucking hard. Also, treacherous.
I thought I’d stick to the unpaved soft-dirt portion of the running trail because it’d be easier on my feet, but my very first step my left foot slipped and twisted a little bit and a sharp pain ran up the outside of my ankle. “Fuck,” I thought. “My first step and I fuck myself up.” But I just ran through it and a few strides later, and a switch over to the paved side of the trail, the pain was gone.
Half a mile later, though, I felt beat. My feet didn’t hurt, and in fact running in the FiveFingers felt pretty good even at full bore for half an mile, but I was pretty tired. Running another mile, much less two and a half, seemed like a fool’s errand, but I wanted to keep going. Maybe another quarter of a mile and I thought I was going to die. Maybe I was running too fast (My Tracks recorded my average moving speed at 10mph) to start out. After standing around for 15 minutes in the sun fearing the .7 mile run/walk back, I took off.
And immediately the same sharp pain in my left foot happened in my right foot, on asphalt. No slip this time, just pain. It went away, again, after a few strides, and then the ball of my left foot was starting to hurt. One I started panting for air, I stopped and walked the rest of the way. It was clear to me then that this whole running thing was going to take a lot of work if I wanted to be able to run any sort of distance. I didn’t even manage to run a full mile.
On the upside, though, the KSO Treks were pretty comfortable to run in. I already like them for hikes—the barefoot feel really does help when you’re trying to balance on crumbling terrain—and for day to day use (despite the weirdness of walking by trying to strike with your whole foot to distribute the force of walking), so now I’d say they’re pretty good all around, but I do find myself wanting to buy a more traditional pair of FiveFingers, not the heavy duty Treks, to try running in. Why use the Treks to run on clean, flat terrain? No reason.
In summary, I totally dig these shoes. I think they’re rad. As I train myself to become a better runner I’ll keep updating this, etc.
Miscellany
Unicycling in FiveFingers: I think unicycling in these is great and I’ve done in a fair bit. The only problem is that there is literally no ankle bone protection, it’s all just out there, so if you are in the habit of twisting your ankles into your cranks while they’re spinning around or you’re falling off, these things are not for you. I don’t think wearing the socks Injini (or whoever) makes would help, ’cause they’re just thin fabric, not padding. I also can’t imagine putting ankle braces on before putting these on. So, practice safe unicycling when wearing these. I think the additional ‘feel’ might be helpful when unicycling, but someone more experience than I would have to judge.
Parkour and the like: I can imagine these would be awesome for parkour and free running. When unloading containers from China at work, I often have to jump around and on boxes (think Prince of Persia, a lot of ledge balancing and leaping up tall obstacles) and these things are a dream for that. Warehouse workers have special gloves that are textured with latex-type stuff so that when you grab a box your hand ‘sticks’ to the box—it’s so you don’t have to use much, if any, strength to grip the box, and it’s very very helpful—and I told my jealous co-workers that wearing FiveFingers is basically like having those gloves for your feet. As such I can imagine that running and jumping over uneven terrain and trying to scale walls and such in these would be pretty bitching. I don’t have any first hand experience, though.
Daily use: I forgot to say that wearing them at work for 8 hours has not been uncomfortable. No sore feet or anything. Then I go home, shower, and put them back on. So, you could say they’re comfortable and good replacements for regular shoes. If it wasn’t for the lack of design options (or the fact that they’re all ugly) I could see myself switching to a FiveFingers-only shoe collection.
Stinkiness: My Treks have yet to stink. I took them in the ocean on Day 6 and rinsed them out and let them dry. I’ve smelled them deep after an eight hour shift at work and they don’t stink like feet. They have a weird odor (that kind of chemically “it smells like it’s making it not smell” smell), but it doesn’t come out of the shoe. Rumor has it if your VFF start to stink you just put them in a ziploc bag with some baking soda and put them in the freezer. The baking soda absorbs the smell and the freezer kills any bacteria growing in them. (I used to keep my Camelbak in the freezer to keep it from getting contaminated, at least until my ex-girlfriend cut it up.) This is what I’ll be doing if my VFF ever stink, but probably not until I get a second pair: I can’t imagine going without my shoes for two days while I freeze them and then wash them.