The bare essentials

Frustrated and in agony, writer Jamie Troughton ditched his flash running shoes and joined the barefoot brigade, with startling results.

Monkey boy, freak feet, gorilla toes. You name it, I've heard it. Even my daughters taunt me about my "ugly shoes" and keep a not-so-polite distance whenever I walk them to school.
I've walked through airport lounges and been heckled by teenagers. Disgusted mothers shield their progeny, middle-aged men look as if I've just urinated on their cabbage patch.
The cost of fashion and peer respectability is a small price to pay, however, for salvation of the soles. I swear my Vibram Five Fingers will be the last brand of footwear I'll run in. Haven't you heard? Minimalism is here. Welcome to the barefoot revolution.
Three years ago, I was a shambling wreck of a runner. A pair of sparkly Asics were turfed in a wardrobe corner, their custom-fitted, high-tech orthotics splayed out like the tongue of a dying lizard.
A crack at the 32km Kauri Run on the Coromandel Peninsula had descended into an agonising hell, knees wedged with barbed wire, calves cramping and furious quads threatening hara-kiri.
Hunched over, whimpering slightly and the closest to tears I've been at the end of an athletic pursuit, I vowed never again to break out of a fast walk. Fallen arches and dodgy hip-flexors surely meant my running days were over.
The beauty of sports journalism, however, is that inspiration can hide just around the corner. Three key events soon conspired to ruin my self-imposed exile.
The first was stumbling across the incredible deeds of Hamilton's Kerry Suter (www.runstreak.blogspot.com), a self-confessed fat IT sloth who got up off the couch one day and started running. For 935 consecutive days - without fail - he pounded the roads, turning himself into one of New Zealand's foremost endurance runners through sheer willpower and discipline.
The next penny dropped while covering a local cross-country race. Tauranga Boys' College prodigy Michael Sutton burst on to the scene, flying along in bare feet, head back, all erect posture and seemingly effortless ease.
Finally, Christopher McDougall's outstanding book, Born to Run, dropped on to my desk to review. I read it, reviewed it, then read it again.
In a nutshell, it tells the story of mankind's regression into shoes; how we're genetically predisposed to run long distances unshod and how small groups of indigenous runners continue to defy science with their running abilities. McDougall touched on characters such as "Barefoot Ted" McDonald (www.barefootted.com) - who competed in the Tarawera Ultra Marathon in Kawerau in March - and he also introduced Vibram Five Fingers to the literary world.
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Vibram is an Italian company named after its founder, Vitale Bramani, who lost six mountaineering friends in the Italian Alps in 1935. Those deaths were partly blamed on inadequate footwear and drove Bramani, with the help of Leopoldo Pirelli, of Pirelli Tires, to develop the first rubber soles for shoes. Today, Vibram soles feature on the bottom of more than 1000 footwear brands worldwide.
In 2005 they came up with the Five Fingers line specifically targeted at sailors and kayakers; light-weight and minimalist, they also allow wriggling toes to provide extra traction.
Then the burgeoning barefoot-running brigade pounced on them - here was a product which allowed their natural shoeless gait to be adapted to city streets and gravel paths.
Sod all that - they were kooky-looking and I was desperate. I ordered a pair over the internet, impatiently awaited their arrival, then set off.
Now here's a tip: if the last time you ran barefoot was three times around the field at primary school, your calf muscles are in for the rudest shock imaginable - especially if you tackle slopes.
My lower legs burned with a fiery passion weeks after the gentlest of gallops up the Papamoa Hills. Yes, it was a deep, throbbing anger, but strangely satisfying.
Alternating Vibrams and pure barefoot runs along the beach, with Suter's fearless streak echoing in my skull, I set off in search of running sanity, determined to see how far I could push my embittered legs.
Remarkably, 142 days later, my legs were loving life, though the strain of the streak was running the rest of my body down. The 'flu hit with a vengeance and I spent the rest of the winter holed up. My running campaigns these days are definitely a bit more moderated.
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Think of your feet as the ultimate piece of suspension. Toes searching, arch braced, muscles tensed to embrace the ground. Walk around your driveway one day and feel how your soles curve around stones, adapt to subtle inclines and seek balance at all costs.
Now cover those feet with foam, rubber, gel, sensors, air bubbles and whatever other gunk that goes into a modern running shoe. Notice any difference?
I certainly have. These days, each stride lands softly on the ground, a pattering of autumn leaves rather than the pounding of falling limbs. I run taller, with hips forward. It just feels easy.
Sure, going barefoot hasn't increased my speed from recreational zone to elite, but running pain-free more than makes up for it. In fact, the only running injury I've had directly attributable to wearing Vibrams was a sprained little toe, left dangling on a tree root during a multisport event in Whakatane last year.
It's not just sloths like me joining the movement, though. American Patrick Sweeney recently won the Palos Verdes Marathon in a sharp 2hrs 37min 14secs, clad only in a pair of Five Fingers Sprints. Aucklander James Kuegler ran this year's Tokyo Marathon in 2:39:26, Christchurch's Josh Stevenson completed last year's Coast to Coast barefoot, while national mountain-running champion Ruby Muir is a keen disciple.
The bizarre footwear is appearing in ultra-distance runs, treks and bush trails near you.
Are Vibrams and the barefoot movement for everyone? Nope. City-slickers who first pulled on sneakers as toddlers should avoid, as should people from Mataura - they've yet to make Vibram Six Fingers.
Will I continue to suffer the slings and arrows of outraged foot voyeurs? You betcha.
Vibram Five Fingers are available at Smith Sports Shoes in Tauranga and Hikoi in Mount Maunganui. For more information, check out www.fivefingers.co.nz