Barefoot running gains an unusual following

August 17, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By Laura Casey

Contra Costa Times

WALNUT CREEK, Calif.

Maybe you’ll see Michae Legault of Pleasant Hill, Calif., in shoes on special occasions.

But you certainly won’t see him running in shoes.

The former track and cross-country coach has been a barefoot runner for seven years. He runs the Iron Horse Trail barefoot, runs around Concord Community Park barefoot; he even works barefoot.

Legault says running shoes, especially those with a wedge at the heel, are useless, even dangerous. He prefers running feet unshod and, like many across the country, he believes going barefoot is the best way to run.

Legault found this out after years of looking for a flat-foot running shoe and getting a black toenail during a marathon. Two miles before the finish line, he took off his shoes and finished the run.

“I thought, ‘This rocks’ and stopped looking for my flat shoe,” the 50-year-old contractor says.

Barefoot running, though unusual and odd to most runners, is gaining momentum. It has gotten more popular in the last 10 years and was recently brought into the mainstream by Christopher McDougall’s 2009 best-selling book, “Born to Run.” Though those who run barefoot and some researchers say the practice improves stride and prevents injury, some doctors say it’s not good for the feet and may even spark more injury.

At least one man ran the Oakland Running Festival, a 26.2-mile marathon, barefoot last March. That was Efrem Rensi, a University of California-Davis student. Rensi took off his running shoes seven years ago.

Before he started going barefoot, Rensi was a casual runner with difficulty. He had pain in his Achilles tendon and searched for shoes that would fix the problem.

“I bought a motion- controlled shoe and walked around, but things didn’t get any better,” Rensi says.

He turned to the Web and found a website by Barefoot Ken Bob expounding the benefits of shoeless running.

“He looked like this weird hippie, and at the time, I was really self-conscious about the way I looked, but somehow I started to do it,” he says.

His Achilles tendon problems come and go; they aren’t chronic anymore. And he managed to complete the marathon around Oakland in three hours and 33 minutes with just a small injury to one of his toes.

Dig into the barefoot running community just a little bit, and you’ll see dozens of testimonials on how barefoot running is better for you, can help solve or prevent running injury (statistics say nearly 30 percent of runners are injured every year) and is simply more fun than running with shoes.

That’s certainly what “Barefoot” Ted McDonald says. The Seattle resident was featured in McDougall’s “Born to Run,” which uncovers the secrets and joys of running with a tribe in Mexico, as the sole barefoot runner in an ultra-marathon in that country’s Copper Canyon. McDonald tried running in traditional running shoes, even searching out the best shoes for his particular problem: excruciating lower back pain. After buying some of the most padded, springy shoes he could find, his pain continued until he took the shoes off and started walking barefoot.

McDonald, who is working on sandals for runners, says he’s not terribly dogmatic about being barefoot. He also runs in minimalist footwear such as the popular Vibram FiveFingers shoes that mold to the feet and have a spot for each toe. The fad, he says, is not barefoot running. The fad is running with popular, highly cushioned running shoes.

There is some science to back what McDonald and other barefoot runners are saying.

Doctors studying at Harvard University have suggested, with warnings, that barefoot running or running with minimal footwear such as the Vibram FiveFingers shoes, can be safe, perhaps even safer, than running with cushioned shoes. That’s because the foot strikes the pavement differently without the cushion — it puts less pressure on the heel. More pressure on the heel could lead to repetitive stress injury.

Running barefoot, on the other hand, promotes midfoot and forefoot striking, the study says. Those strikes appear to produce less of an impact force on the body than heel striking. Some doctors, especially podiatrists, are not convinced.