Running in Sandals

Publication date

28 Apr 2024

Estimated reading time

4 min read

I ran 50 miles in bare­foot san­dals, and here’s what hap­pened to me…

In the pre­vi­ous episode I tried running barefoot, and I liked it. But the prob­lem is that it’s not sus­tain­able: I don’t want to run bare­foot around the city because of glass and other stuff, and taking off my shoes, hiding them, putting them back on in the park — too much hassle. So I started look­ing into bare­foot footwear.

Did some research, found some­thing that looks decent and is easy to buy.

The first couple of days it was hard just to walk in them: hit­ting the asphalt hurt, every­thing was too hard, but then I got used to it. Tried run­ning. From the bare­foot per­spec­tive, the feel­ing of the sur­face — great, but over­all — not so much: it feels like the foot sweats more than in normal run­ning shoes, also the foot moves around (back and forth, side to side, and even up and down), hits the walls of the shoe, it’s less pleas­ant than the con­stant snug­ness of normal run­ning shoes. Left them for walk­ing in winter.

Went for sandals, which are, essen­tially, glass pro­tec­tion tied to the foot. The first couple of days it was hard just to walk in them: the straps rubbed between the toes, but then I got used to it.

Did my first test run — jogged a 10K: https://www.strava.com/activities/11147890089. Out of habit, I tight­ened the laces too much, result­ing in big bloody holes rubbed between my toes (the edi­tors have photos). But after about three days every­thing healed and I could try again.

Since then I’ve done sev­eral runs, after each of which I acquired new blis­ters, chaf­ing, and micro-suf­fer­ing.

How do you like, for exam­ple, this blis­ter that appeared on the side, where the toe doesn’t even touch any­thing, but then pre­vents com­fort­able run­ning in sneak­ers? :)

But all these blis­ters stop being much of a bother after about three days, just in time to start the next bare­foot run.

At first I only ran easy work­outs in them, the slow­est jog (six-minute pace), but I’ve already tried a reg­u­lar run (five-minute pace) — really enjoyed it, hope these blis­ters will also heal in about three days (not very pleas­ant at the moment :).

On the pre­vi­ous post I got a lot of com­ments that pissed me off: they were com­ments about how you can’t just go and start run­ning bare­foot. You have to ease into it slowly, grad­u­ally. It’s true. But it’s an infu­ri­at­ing truth. I was born bare­foot, ran around bare­foot at the dacha all through child­hood and walk around the house bare­foot, what could stop me from start­ing to run bare­foot right away?! Tender paws can…

I’m no longer inter­ested in num­bers, graphs, and other run­ning dynam­ics, like in the pre­vi­ous episode. Not inter­ested in form and run­ning tech­nique. Run­ning bare­foot, espe­cially not long and not fast — is just much more pleas­ant, inter­est­ing, and fun. And walk­ing even more so, I’ve been walk­ing only in these san­dals for a month now. Plan­ning to do every third work­out in them.

Four kilo­me­ters would be ideal for such runs, there wouldn’t even be blis­ters. Five — great for foot train­ing. Eleven — overkill, but I need 14–15, so there’s no choice.

Calves are con­stantly tense. I think I can handle this load because I’ve been train­ing calves all winter, doing single leg calf raises with a ket­tle­bell.

The prob­a­bil­ity of get­ting a micro stress frac­ture in the foot with this reg­i­men is very high. I sense that the edge is some­where close by. Trying to walk along it.

Com­pen­sat­ing for the load with other runs in shoes with max­i­mum drop (14mm).

If my feet sur­vive, I’ll update this post with con­clu­sions after another 50 miles (50 × 1.6 / 11 = 7 runs). If they don’t sur­vive, I’ll update when I can get to reg­u­lar con­sis­tent runs with­out dam­ag­ing and injur­ing my foot every time.