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July 20, 2005Baring their solesMore people are running barefoot these daysTHE LOS ANGELES TIMES The Los Angeles Times Ken Bob Saxton, center, and other barefoot entrants at the Palos Verdes Marathon in Palos Verdes, Calif. Saxton says he has fewer injuries when running barefoot. They happily doff their tennies to go for regular runs. The 2004 Los Angeles Marathon had four barefoot runners, and eight in 2005. Many people's first introduction to barefoot exercise is through yoga and Pilates, and often their only exposure to shoeless runners was via barefoot South African runner Zola Budd's infamous collision with American Mary Decker in the 1984 Olympics. Many African athletes train shoeless, and Vin Lananna, Oberlin College's director of athletics and physical education, has had his athletes train barefoot to enhance performance. Barefoot hiking has its own aficionados and an unofficial leader in Richard Keith Frazine, a Connecticut-based store owner who satisfied his curiosity about hiking barefoot about 35 years ago and hasn't ventured in boots since. "If you're accustomed to feeling nothing more from your feet than the rise and fall of your own weight in your shoes, this is very different," says Frazine, author of "The Barefoot Hiker." Although some might describe the sensation at first as painful, he says, "When you walk outside in bare feet, in the first couple of moments the sensations are a lot louder." Hiking barefoot, he adds, becomes another sense. "It becomes as much a part of your being there as seeing or hearing or smelling the environment." Nike did some research on its own and discovered that barefoot runners do rely less on the heel and more on the ball of the foot for shock absorption. Tobie Hatfield, the company's senior engineer for advanced products, also looked at the feet of some African athletes and discovered that their feet look stronger. "They look like they've been in a weight gym working out," he says. In applying these findings to a new shoe design, Hatfield says he wanted more flexibility, and sliced the prototype sole length- and width-wise, making deep grooves. "That," he says, "allowed the muscles to be more in control rather than the shoe be in control." The result is Nike's new Free line of shoes for running and cross-training. The company plans to apply some of the barefoot principles to its other shoes. "I think that natural motion is even more of a big deal here," Hatfield says. But be advised that the new shoes take some breaking in. They come with an owners manual - something that bare feet don't.
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