The Beginning

Today I took the first steps towards my new goal:

To run a sub-5:00 mile barefoot.

I’ve had this idea in my head for a while now, but I finally was pushed over the edge after reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall (more on this later). I’ve been interested in barefoot running since McDougall’s article about the Tarahumara Indians appeared in Men’s Health several years ago. Since then, I’ve dabbled with the Nike Free shoes and tried changing my form to strike with the forefoot, but never with any real commitment to training.

First, a little bit of a background about me. I’m 30 years old and a former high school runner. I ran for just over a semester in college before finally giving in to a recurring hip injury (it was not a career-ending injury - just the catalyst that ultimately convinced me to quit). I’ve run under 5:00 in the mile, but not since I was 18.

Since I quit running in college, I’ve done very little running. I’ve kept active with Ultimate (Frisbee) and rock climbing, but the only race I’ve trained for in the last few years has been the Mickelson Trail Half-Marathon in Deadwood, South Dakota (which is a great first half-marathon if you’re thinking of running one).

So why do I want to run a sub-5:00 mile barefoot? Well, there are a lot of people out there proving that you can run barefoot for 50 miles, 100 miles, or even more. I want to prove that you can run barefoot fast (or at least moderately fast). Part of it is that I just want to prove to myself that I can still run sub-5:00 if I put my mind to it, and the other part is to validate barefoot running as the “right” way to run.

The first time trial

So this morning, I took a warmup run to the CMU track (conveniently located an easy 10-minute run from my house) to run a mile time trial to establish my baseline mile time.

Although I’d run a few test laps earlier this week barefoot, I didn’t think my feet were ready for a mile at full speed, so I ran in my old high school racing flats (Nike Zoom Waffles). Since I had no idea what I could run a mile at, I decided to go out at 80 seconds (5:20 mile pace) and go from there. After the first lap, it was pretty clear that I wouldn’t be able to maintain the pace, so I backed off a bit. My 2nd and 3rd laps were progressively slower, but I was able to pick it up a bit on the gun lap and ended up with a 5:46, which I was honestly pretty pleased with. Considering my lack of cardiovascular endurance right now, that’s not too bad - but it will give me plenty to work on over the next few months.

So what’s the plan?

I don’t have a concrete plan right now; just a goal. The plan will come later. My main focus right now is to learn the proper barefoot running technique and not push it too hard, too fast. The last thing I want is to push my weak feet too hard early on and end up sidelined with an injury.

As I learn more about barefoot running, I hope that this will become a good resource for someone that wants to start running barefoot. There are already a lot of great blogs about barefoot running out there already, so be sure to check those out as well (in the sidebar).