For the love of soul and sole

My wife saw someone walking a dog on a muddy Common last week. The dog was barefooted and so was the walker. We both wondered what the walker did to avoid treading mud into their floors once home. Use a garden hose? Put footwear on? Walk to the bathroom with plastic bags over their feet? For humans, barefooted movement might be normal indoors behaviour due to flat carpets and smooth tiles. However, it is surely more abnormal outdoors behaviour due to the rougher surfaces of soil, mud, stone and gravel. During a parkrun earlier this year I overtook a barefooted runner. The route that day was actually fairly conducive to barefootedness, but when I went past him (after the half way point!) on a section of stony pathway he was on the adjacent grass to avoid some rubble. He was also paying close attention to where his feet were treading. I can't remember the exact date or month (March or April) but looking through some parkrun results from last Spring I think it might have been Gary Holder, a barefooted runner.

Big respect to him! Don't knock it until you've tried it. Running parkrun barefooted would result in me running a slower time and increase the risk of a cut into a foot and pressure on my ankles. But it would also avoid the current daily nuisance of seeing my muddied trail runners and wishing they would magically clean themselves. If I had the will I could clean them in far less time it takes me to read a chapter of Christopher McDougall's Born To Run, which is my current leisure time reading. The book has the image of a foot sole on its front cover and introduced me to the Tarahumara runners in the Copper Canyon mountains of Mexico who run very long distances wearing minimalist sandals and Barefoot Ted. I doubt I'd ever be persuaded to ditch the running shoes completely and the lengthy, gradual transition time required (in order to minimise risk of a stress fracture) to become a barefoot devotee sounds unappealing.

But as a one-off? For my 250th milestone parkrun next year? Would it be worth the slow trudge around Denbies vineyard if it helped me take better notice of my feet and better appreciate their function and provide a memorable milestone run? Maybe. Would it prove to be a 'peak experience'? Maybe, maybe not. George Sheehan's Running & Being: The Total Experience is a book devoted to the beauty of running. He described peak experiences as "when you have a sense of oneness with yourself and nature. These are truly times of peace the world cannot give. It may be that the hereafter will have them in constant supply. I hope so. But while we are in the here and now, play is the place to find them" (p.61, Kindle). Of running, Sheehan also said "you know you are indeed finite and imperfect, but you are also, like David, fearfully and wonderfully made" (p.85, Harmony/Rodale, Kindle Edition). My experience of running often concurs with his when he says "I retreat into a universe bounded by my line of sight, the sound of my footsteps, the feelings of heat and cold, of sun and rain and wind. I narrow the cosmos to this hour, this road, this running. Naught else occupies me. I am content" (pp.229-230, Kindle).

Sheehan's description sounds like the pure flow of movement and motion and of being absorbed by 'the present moment.' But, still, wouldn't just one small, sharp incision in my bare foot during the 30-40 minute jog spoil the whole experience of a barefooted parkrun? Wouldn't it leave me not only regretting my abnormal decision not to run wearing shoes, but also injured and frustratingly unable to run until my foot had healed? The niggling plantar fasciitis from six months ago, that felt like a drawing pin pressed into my right sole, might flare up again. I might get a calf strain, or worse.

Why run just on my own two feet if I don't have to? The cushioning and grip of my shoes that I have paid to use is the main reason. But if McDougall is to be believed there's no evidence that running shoes are any help at all in injury prevention, running shoes can cause feet to over-pronate (pronation is the foot's movement to absorb shock with each step) and for thousands of years humans have walked and run without the support of high-tech cushioned shoes with embedded gel and air. He writes "When you run in cushioned shoes, your feet are pushing through the soles in search of a hard, stable platform" (p. 173) ... "Your foot's centerpiece is the arch, the greatest weight-bearing design ever created. The beauty of any arch is the way it gets stronger under stress; the harder you push down, the tighter its parts mesh. Buttressing the foot's arch from all sides is a high-tensile web of twenty-six bones, thirty-three joints, twelve rubbery tendons, and eighteen muscles, all stretching and flexing like an earthquake-resistant suspension bridge" (p.175).

Could I dare to bare? Could the feeling of shoeless, barefootedness that McDougall admires - "stretching, grasping, seeking the ground with splayed toes, gliding in for a landing like a lake-bound swan" (p. 183) - be a 'peak experience' of peace and contentment that Sheehan described of running? Not if I turn my ankle over or step on a sharp stone, but potentially, yes, it could help me feel more intensely the joy of treading the ground of God's good earth. God called Moses to remove his sandals in his presence, "for you are standing on holy ground" (Exodus 3:5). When Eric Liddell ran he felt God's pleasure. Barefoot running could also be an occasion of exhilarating, transcendent joy.

So if I can't get hold of a cheap pair of lightweight 'barefoot shoes' or 'five-finger foot gloves' that have super-thin soles and help to emulate and replicate barefootedness, I seem to have written myself into committing to run my 250th parkrun (in February or March, when the ground should be soft but not a mud-bath) barefooted, and to believe - if only for one Saturday morning of my life - that feet are our most natural 'shoes' to run in. For one lap of Denbies I will embrace the potential temporary discomfort of no cushioning and of needing to land on the forefoot and midfoot areas of my feet. For this one parkrun only I shall not let my shoes rob me of the feeling and freedom of letting my feet move like feet should move. For this one parkrun only I shall suspend my normal view that, despite heel-strike, shoes are the best foot protection generally needed for running and treat the experience as an opportunity to burn a few more calories than usual, due to having to put extra effort into moving my body forward without the 'spring' and grip given by running shoes!

I don't own a dog and I won't hold it against my wife if she decides not to join me for a barefoot walk on a muddy Common during the winter, but this might just give my feet a nice, little massage and be the best kind of preparation for my parkrun milestone moment of minimalism.