So for the remainder of Week 4 I did my standard 3-5 miles barefoot each day (other than Friday which is a rest day). Saturday morning was a track workout and I decided that I would run in my VFFs since we would be doing speed work. No major issues at all for Week 4 and running in VFFs went well. I was able to hang with the 20 200s and we fnished up with about a mile of pure barefoot work (cool down and drills). The rest of our group is not into barefoot running but each week we do a little bit of barefoot drills to help people with proper form.
One thing that I noticed was that arch type (flat footed, high arches, etc) seems to definitely impact the barefoot running experience. One of our trainers is constantly telling me to take it slow, and be careful with my minimalist and barefoot running. I have noticed that he seems to have very low arches. The same can be said for a number of other people who have done some barefoot running but calim to have had major issues. Almost all of them are either flat footed or have very low arches.
I have always had extremely high arches (when people see my feet that are usually taken aback as to the curve in my arch). Other than a few issues with blisters (due to not picking up my feet) and some soreness in the top of the foot (standard pain from foot adjustments), I have had almost no problems. I think that people with normal to high arches have more of a spring type action in their running gate (when using a fore foot or midfoot form) which makes the transition to barefoot running easier. I could be totally wrong though, and this is just based on ancedotal evidence, not scientific study.
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