We each picked up a pair of Vibram Five Fingers at the OS Outdoors Show this year. They are fantastic.
We’ve hardly taken them off. In fact I considered getting married in them.
Rachel, our regular walking buddy and Physiotherapist, also got a pair and wears them to work all the time. She gets cold feet (in fact she has proper Reynaud’s Syndrome – a scary thing that) so she’s far more comfy with a pair of toe-socks inside them. In fact at times she even finds them a bit on the warm side during the summer.
The toe-socks also mean that they need washing far less often. Without them the Five Fingers can get a bit pongy after a couple of days.
The feeling of something between your toes was something I wasn’t sure that I’d get used to but after the first hour I’ve never been aware of it.
It’s not quite like walking bare foot in the sense that you don’t have to be quite so careful where you tread when wearing them. I walk along quite “naturally”, as if wearing shoes. You also notice odd things, like tarmac actually feels softer to walk on than concrete.
I’ve been wearing them for the 2k each way walk to work on which LB usually comes along and we’ve both found that at first we got sore heels. A mixture of slightly “warm” spots as if they were about to blister and also a sort of “impact” related tenderness.
We swapped back to the Terrocs for a few days now and then to let the soreness subside. Our feet have simply become tougher and now cope without a problem – even for running short distances (possibly longer distances – we’ve not tried!).
Toughening up the skin like that is probably an advantage on a long walk but of course the big advantage is the better proprioception and strength.
The oddest thing was when I came to take my Terrocs off one lunch time on the hill. I massaged my feet and found to my surprise that they felt far, far more “muscly” than they used to. My feet just feel stronger.
In fact, we’ve found them so comfortable that we’ve decided to take them with us on the GR5. We think they’re going to be worth the 386grams for my EU45 and the 248grams for LB’s EU36.
Although we decided to go with the conventional footwear for the actual ceremony, for the party afterwards, as you can see from the picture my brother took, we both decided to change into something more comfortable!