Hi, I'm Jimmy and my running partner is Alice and we are
Huaracheholics.
We've been trying the huaraches for a couple of months and I wanted to
share some of our experience with them so far.
First a little history, I'm 57 and since the 70's have either been
running for health reasons or working at jobs which were active enough
that I had no need of running to stay fit. Twenty miles a day of lawn
crew is enough to substitute for a fitness program. I've either worn
boots or cheap shoes for work and for play all that time, without
anything worse than a few stress fractures. Up until I bought a good
pair of running shoes for a half marathon last fall--supportive
insoles, bridgework heels, all the stuff that is supposed to be good
news for feet--I'd never had chronic foot trouble. After the race I
was crippled with heelspurs and an injury from an old piece of glass
embedded in my heel long enough that I'd forgotten about it. My first
instinct was to blame the shoes, but when almost everyone says they
are the right gear it's hard to go against the tide of opinion.
Alice has been running for a few years as part of a fitness program
and is way younger than me, but more careful of her feet. She's been
through several pairs of proper running shoes, most of which have
caused her problems, and the half marathon crippled her as badly as it
did me. We both went to different podiatrists and got much of the
same advice.
It's taken us half a year to recover to the point that we can begin
running again, and I think that the part of the treatments we received
that really did benefit us was taking the time off from running in
order to heal. We've been told to wear arch supports and the type of
running shoes that injured us, and never ever to go barefoot, even in
the house. Neither of us is happy with that advice.
We read about barefoot running a couple of years ago but didn't try
it. We run on gravel and dirt roads or gravel on pavement (which is
probably worse than plain gravel) and my previous experience with
running barefoot back in the 70's was that after a couple of miles the
bottoms of your feet wear away. I know it's possible to toughen up
and get past that but it didn't seem very practical for us, running in
areas where there is quite a lot of road debris. The huaraches seemed
like a good alternative.
We had some problems getting them strung correctly and are still
tweaking the rigging a bit. Neither of us can say they've been
totally comfortable or that we haven't gotten blisters. They take
some adjustment and some getting used to. The knots have bothered
both of us and we haven't seen a lot of flattening out and
disappearing in regards to that. (Update: finally, finally this has
happened, oh glorious day!) I reached the point that I just couldn't
take it any more and walked with one sandal and one bare foot a half
mile back to the house to work on the problem. That was after about
ten miles total on the sandals, so it was an issue that wasn't going
away on it's own.
I have the leather strap sandals and Alice has the hemp. Two square
knots in the end of the strap beneath the toes is too much for us;
maybe our feet are different. I trimmed six inches of the strap back
to about a quarter inch wide instead of 3/8" wide and snugged a single
half hitch very tight on the sole end of the strap. That has been a
lot better. I'm not getting the blisters between the toes any more
and the knot isn't noticeable. We haven't quite gotten Alice's hemp
straps to that point yet. She tried wearing them without socks for a
two mile run and chafed herself bloody in several places, so I
wouldn't recommend doing that until you get accustomed to them and
your skin gets toughened up. Neither of us are there yet.
The good part outweighs that, though. I didn't expect there would be
a good part after wearing them the first time. We made it to the end
of the driveway and back, about sixty feet one way, on gravel, and
that was plenty far enough. Almost immediately I hit a rock with the
sorest part of my heel it just lit me up with pain. Didn't seem like
a really good idea and I was very glad to get home after that long
sixty feet. The next time we walked a little farther, and the next
time we walked a little and mostly ran for a mile. I expected to be
completely crippled again after that, but afterward I felt like I'd
been given a really great foot massage. I actually wanted to try it
again.
So far our longest run in sandals is only three and a quarter miles,
and we've had to stop several times enroute to adjust straps (until
today, another update, we are making real progress now), but we seem
to be rigging them a little better and having gradually less trouble
with that part of it. Physically we are still adapting to the
different style of running. I'm just getting to the point where I can
run downslope without mincing along and dodging pebbles, and I'm
feeling muscles in my calves that I probably never used when I wore
shoes. I know that Alice is having some ankle pain, but we are
thinking that this is an adjustment issue; both of us have had less
problem with the heelspur issues, which seem to be going away now that
we wear huaraches for runs and simple shoes for work.
What has really amazed me is that the hip pain I've had in my left
side for some years, and which I thought was a sign of age and overuse
and something I'd just have to tolerate, is almost entirely gone. It
is completely gone on runs, and only comes back when I wear shoes.
That seems to have been the result of landing on my left foot
incorrectly, due to footgear design. I noticed when first running in
huaraches that I landed on the balls of my feet but collapsed onto my
heels. If you do that in huaraches it hurts. Now that I'm getting
more strength in my calves, I'm running and walking differently and
the various pains I've grown to accept are going away or gone
already. I never expected that to happen.
So yeah, I'm pretty much sold on the idea.
Jimmy
