Running Barefoot

I do not recommend it. Especially in the city where it is likely that your running surface will be concrete or pavement.

It is terrible for your feet, and worse for your knees. It is dangerous and it is painful, please do not do it.

insert toes, perhaps a spoiler?

Disclaimer aside, I shall proceed to justify and describe my experience clocking about 500km(?) barefoot.

To paint the picture, in addition to not wearing shoes, I was often not wearing a shirt. I had a beard and a dragon tattoo on my back. I was largely running on the roads; in other words - I was not afraid to die.

insert city2surf

Nonetheless, having survived the ordeal, it was a profound experience for me. All this pained running supplemented sobriety and fueld my commitment to mathematics. Hitting the bare concrete with my feet seemed a fitting feat at the time.

I’m glad I did it, and I will carry the not-so-flesh wounds that a year of doing this has left me with. My feet have become significantly calloused, along with my mind.

To revitalise the image in your mind, I was 21 years old during this. I’d run on concrete, punch walls and climb trees. I’d do my calculus, lament for love and listen to Kanye.

insert kanye

All in all a significant episode, but one that was contigent on my very personal and otherwise unnatural lifestyle.

Beyond the metaphysical, I do have technical advice for those who (still) wish to try this:

Start slow. The feet are the main restrictors here. For the most part they have been cacooned in the marshmallow capitalistic product that are shoes. Your feet are not acclimated to the hardness and roughness of the floor. Just start running a little slower. As your feet harden (I suggest starting to run in the summer so your feet do not bleed), you will begin to learn more about the floor you step on. You will become more cautious and compassionate about the floor you use for locomotion and also will learn about watching where you step (a deep philosophical lesson) Your feet will become dirty and you will have consolations about cleanliness; another philosophical lesson. c.f. Diogenes. It will fucking hurt. You will question the pain. You might quit. You probably should. If you don’t quit you begin to channel the pain. You make it worth it. You acknowledge that this must be a phase and cannot continue indefinitely. You would need to run this way on grass or dirt. Do you move away or just put on shoes and conform? My answer to the ephemeralism was to make pilgrimages. It can be in the form of a parkrun, or something more metaphorically meaningful: a run to the library, a voyage to a tree. At this point you will also acknowledge that you will quite simply never be as fast as someone with running shoes. They have extra springs under their feet! If you make it this far, it remains a permanent asset for you. You can cover ground quickly without shoes should the need ever arise. Great optionality, a powerful position. c.f. Nassim Nicholas Taleb Choosing to take a bite of concrete on each subsequent step does toughen the soul. Oh, and yes you can also paint your nails and look at them - that’s always rather fun. Furthermore, a couple points: your feet will expand both from the swelling of hitting asphalt as well as the increased musculature. Your feet will become quite hot too. I’m not sure why this happens more without shoes, but when you put shoes back on you will really notice it. Next, realise that you lack cushioning and so cannot afford the same stride length as other runners; increase your cadence and step shorter but quicker!

I wrote the above towards at the end of 2024, now I sit here at the start of 2025, editing my prose and having just run my first 5k parkrun under 20 minutes. I believe at the end of the day you improve at the thing, by doing the thing, and so if this means running with a hat on, or with a friend, or without shoes - just do it. How you run is less important than running itself, and like any good Machine Learning Model - which I believe humans are - you will eventually converge to the optimum solution given an infinite amount of data and an infinite amount of epochs! :D

insert 5k in 20 mins, insert ml model converging