Another fairly quiet week (as far as reviews go), here's a review of everyone's favorite, fivefinger KSOs:
- Gear Review - Preliminary - Vibram Five Fingers KSO, and Rob's Big Barefoot Experiment at Tracks of a Trail Runner (Note there is a neat beach running video after the jump!) [KSO]:
My initial thoughts about the Vibrams was that I definitely need to work harder at sharpening my form, which is exactly one of the reasons people espouse running barefoot. I have become a notorious heel striker, and it only takes couple crashes on the heel to realize you should be landing midfoot and toe. Biomechanics aside, as the video shows, I was able to rock hop and not feet too exposed. I might not recommend it for racing gnarly rock laden courses, but one certainly becomes MUCH more vigilant about where their foot is falling when their are obstacles to be negotiated. In fact, one of the instant realizations was that occasionally I have used my trail shoes as more of a battering ram in some tricky terrain. More awareness of the trail, greater concentration on form and foot fall, and quicker turnover have already been observed.
As always, if I've missed any reviews for the past week, please let me know by commenting below or contacting me using the site form. I've got a couple preliminary testings of the new fivefingers KSO Trek to share with you this upcoming week, so stay tuned for that.
And just to see who is paying attention, I'm working on getting this little project fleshed out, a fivefingers/minimalist footwear/barefooting wiki (and I need wiki volunteers if you're interested!).
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 843 articles and 379 comments.
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