The Five Finger Foot Transition

I was in a yoga class on campus a few weeks back and I saw this shaggy-haired boy with strange shoes on. They looked to me like water shoes with individual toes. I'm no trend-follower (quite the opposite, in fact), but I was all over googling those the instant I got home.

They were Vibram Five Fingers. If you don't know, check it out. THE BAREFOOT REVOLUTION IS BEGINNING. I was most intrigued. I have had problems with my hamstrings since I was a small child who ran and walked around the house on tip-toe, and a horse-enthusiast youth who cantered around the back yard on the balls of her feet and sailed over jumps... all lending to tight hammies. In yoga class I can barely lay my legs flat on the floor in front of me in staff pose, let alone lean forward to touch my toes.

I had done reading on not striking so much with your heel when you run, but trying that in my nikes tore my hamstrings to shreds and I couldn't walk upright for almost a week.  I had to find a solution and apparently my brand new runners were not it.
My research:

• my bare feet
• Wired
  
• Birthday Feet (a subsidiary of My Bare Feet)
  
• Why run barefoot? (The video says it ALL)
  
• Nate's Barefoot Blog

By then I was convinced.        
So I hiked, stretching my hamstrings out on the sides of buildings every few minutes (much to the embarrassment of my friend) downtown to Novacks (an amazing store) to try these things on for myself. The clerk said he had eight pairs of VFFs left, and one was my size. My dreams of the solid black KSOs with the neoprene upper to 'keep stuff out' were dashed when he brought up lime green and blue-grey Sprints, but when he said that the price was going up with the next shipment, I figured I would nab them while I could.

I wore them out of the store, noting that the little grippy cuts in the bottom stick to tile flooring like some sort of spiderman feature. Cool.

Vibram promises that your foot will land in its natural centre of balance. 
And it does.

Vibram promises that the multitude of little bones and tendons in your feet that are confined in a shoe will absorb the shock of running instead of your ankles, knees, and hips. 
And they do.

Vibram promises a more natural-fitting shoe that allows you to be more in touch with the surfaces you tread on. True again.

Running in Komoka woods, I intentionally walked all over the smooth rocks, balanced with my toes on the fallen trees (which a flat-soled cross-trainer would have more difficulty doing) and shuffled through the meadow to feel the grass run between my toes.

The verdict? Satisfied! Ecstatic! Even if the neoprene doesn't last as long as I  hope it will, I will HAPPILY fork out more money for new ones. Maybe multiple new ones. I'm even thinking KSO treks and injinjis for winter... but it gets damned cold here....