Conor Kayaking and Longboarding in Five Finger Sprints

By Justin Owings on Aug 17, 2009 | In user stories | 1 comment »

Conor had uploaded to the Birthday Shoes / Vibram Five Fingers Facebook page the above photo of him on his longboard wearing his grey Vibram Five Finger Sprints. I sent him a message asking about how they performed. A bit of a conversation ensued and here is what Conor had to say:

Yeah Ive skated a bunch in them. They are really great. My foot moves more naturally than it would in a flat skate shoe. Doing slides and carves feels really cool because there's no padding do dampen the feel of the board.

I asked how the Vibram soles were holding up given I've heard that skateboarding can require a good bit of sole-breaking power, which might wear the VFF soles down excessively. However, Conor indicated that they are holding up great — though he doesn't foot drag at all in them.

Finally, I asked Conor how his Sprints fared with kayaking. He said:

They arent bad at all. It's generally pretty rocky where we were so I wasn't worried about sand and sediment getting in. And being able to hop out of my boat anywhere and not worry about slipping or hurting my feet underwater was awesome.

Thanks for passing on your experiences, Conor!

About the Author — I founded BirthdayShoes.com in April 2009 on realizing just how much I enjoyed having "free feet" - I mostly wanted to use them for weights, sprints, and plyometrics (I'm not much of a runner!). I'm a Googler by day and minimalist footwear aficionado by night; you can find me 'round Atlanta. If you want to catch up with what I'm doing outside of the site here, follow me on twitter @bdayshoes or @justinno or check out my personal site JustinOwings.com.
Justin Owings+ has written 710 articles and 258 comments.