Running half-marathon in brand new shoes - Good or bad idea?

For all of you who has followed my blog you know that I have been doing barefoot running for a while now.

• 5th of June 2009 - No pain no gain, or no shoes running...
• 23rd of August 2009 - 10 000 meters almost barefeeted

And now I did the Göteborgsvarvet Halfmarathon in a brand new pairs of Vibram Fivefingers Flow that I collected from the post office yesterday evening.

First why did I order new shoes?

My Vibram Fivefingers classic that I bought last year has been great but there was a few things which I missed with them:

• Was getting a blizzard on the left heal when running longer distanses with them
• Unable to swim with them since they are only secured by the toes
• Couldn't use a running pod to measure the speed, my attampt to use one before was the reason for the blizzard during the Midnattsloppet.

The reason that I went with the flow was that I wanted a pair which I could swim with and use all year around. I also wanted to be able to use the running pod as well as get rid of the flap that was causing my blizzards.

I got my order for the new shoes done online on Monday morning and was crossing my fingers that I would get them before the race, I did hope to get them a bit earlier to have a chance to try them out but knew that might been a longshot. So I got the shoes yesterday evening and tried them on while I was bicycle back home from the post office, they fitted well and I was feeling confident about using them at the race.

So how did it go?

First - who ever you asks they will tell you that you have to run in your shoes, since the fivefingers are almost like a sock I was hopping that would be the case for them... I was kind of wrong...

When you run a half-marathon of 21km most shoes will give you some blizzard, so how did a brand new pair of fivefingers compare?

• 10km bare feeted resulted in massive blood filled blizzards - notthing to really recommand before you have adjusted your feets.
• 10km with Fivefingers Classic resulted in blizzards at the heal but not much more.
• 21km with Fivefingers Flow resulted in massive blizzards under both feets and on some of the toes, the big difference against other blizzards was however that they didn't bother me during the race, even now after the race they don't bother me so if it could be better and worse kind of blizzard these where atleast the better kind.

So what is the verdic? Fivefingers are not immune to blizzards especially not when they are brand new and not worn in. They where however extreamly nice to run in and I don't think that I ever will got back to run in "normal" running shoes ever again.

Regarless of a minimum amount of training, which didn't even feel good when I did it - the Five fingers help me complete the half marathon more than a minute quicker then last year with a final time of:

1hour 46minutes and 48seconds.

Not my personal best but considering my training leading up to the race I'm more then pleased with the result. If there only is one thing that I want you to take away from this post so is it this, after 21km of running my legs, knees and rest of the body is still in a very good shape and that is not thanks to my physical form but to the fact that bare feeted running truly works.