Running a 5-mile race in Vibram 5 Fingers

By Justin Owings on Jul 25, 2009 | In user stories | Leave a comment »

Above pictured is Ryan (#32), his brother (#31), and friend. The photos were taken during and after they all completed a recent 5 mile race in their Vibram 5 Finger KSOs in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Here's Ryan on racing in V5Fs:

On July 18, 2009 my brother, friend and I participated in Lynchburg, VA’s local 5 mile race. We all ran in Vibram KSO Five Fingers.

My brother and I (the two in the blue) have trained pretty much exclusively in the Vibrams using Crossfit.com as our workout program. My friend in the green trained in Nike Frees or the Vibram Five Fingers.

All 3 of us finished the race in around 40 minutes, which was off the pace, but we hope to improve as this was our first 5 miler. We have run a few 5Ks in the past using the Vibram Fivefingers. Post-race my brother and I were a little sore in the calves, while my friend was sore for a few days post-race in his calves.

Ryan and his brother have been doing Crossfit in their VFFs now for a year and a half. Prior to picking up his fivefingerse, Ryan had tried running a 10K in regular shoes as part of a CF workout when he ran into some knee problems:

Near the end of the 10K I couldn't bend my right knee because of my IT band and I had terrible shin splints. After that I started researching and found "barefoot running" which lead me to VFFs. Since getting the VFFs my shin splints and IT band pain are gone.

I have now done about 10 5Ks in them and the 1 5 miler. I know my word-of-mouth has lead to 2 additional purchases and every races generates a lot of interest. I even did some trail running with the local running shoe store -- they were supportive, but not fans of the VFFs.

Good to hear you're having such success in your VFFs for both the intense-style workouts of Crossfit as well as running races or trails! Thanks for telling us your story.

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 709 articles and 258 comments.