barefoot running: belief without evidence?

Prior to autumn of 1993, my feeling towards running shoes was this: Train in the heaviest most cushioned trainers you can tolerate and race in the lightest flats you can tolerate. My reasoning was that heavy trainers conditioned your legs to a certain level of work and then, on race day, the featherweight shoes would feel like nothing at all. It would be like a horse that is used to carrying around a 170 lb rider switching to a 120 lb jockey.

In hindsight, this makes little sense, and my thinking started to change after a grueling cross country hill workout. Consider this: Two identical runners doing the same workout in terms of total distance. Runner A wears five ounce flats and Runner B wears ten ounce trainers. If they both cover the same distance at the exact same intensity, Runner A must necessarily run faster to compensate for the difference in weight. In other words, if we are talking about equal amounts of effort, Runner B won’t run as fast as Runner A because every stride has to move additional weight.

Is either of these approaches better? That is, assuming that total quantified effort is the same, is it better to run at a 7:30 pace in heavy trainers or at a 7:20 pace in lightweight flats? I’m just making those numbers up, but you see the point. If the purpose of training is to prep us for the difficulties of racing, I think the answer has to be: Faster pace, lighter shoes. Had I been wearing lighter shoes, I could have done that grueling hill workout a little faster without actually working any harder. And we should want to acclimate ourselves to running faster, right?

Is barefoot running the logical conclusion to this approach? Maybe, if we are planning on racing barefoot. But as Matt Fitzgerald argues in a recent article, “Elite runners don’t run barefoot. There’s a reason for that”. Yes, evolution designed the human body to run barefoot… but not on asphalt. Yes, evolution designed the human body to run barefoot… but only when supporting an ultra-lean physique (imagine how much work prehistoric man had to do to get a decent meal). Well, I am training – and, more importantly, racing – on asphalt. And yes, I am carrying around some extra weight. So why run barefoot?

My point is that while I’m all for the minimalist approach in terms of wearing the lightest shoes I can tolerate, up to and including the shoes that I race in, I don’t plan on spending significant time barefoot until: 1) I see evidence that it improves racing performance, 2) my races go off-pavement, and 3) I get my weight below 140. The best argument for running barefoot, I think, is that it feels good. But is it faster?