The Tokyo Big Sight is a bit like Earls Court and is used for lots of big shows. As part of the Marathon they were having a Marathon Expo. After we had picked up our race packs we went to have a look around the expo. The kids enjoyed it because there was lots of freebies they could pick up.
One of the stands was being run by an Englishman from the New Forest who was the Japanese agent for Vibram FiveFinger shoes. These are thin soled running shoes with a seperate pockets for each toe. There has been a lot of interest in these shoes in the media recently including a book called Born to Run. The theory is that man was designed to run barefooted. When you run bare footed you run on your toes with a very different running style. Once you put normal trainers on then you loose all the feeling in your feet and start landing your heel first. This then leads to more injury. Apparently there is no evidence that all these fancy trainers manufactured by Nike etc.. reduce injuries. In fact there are tribesmen who can run all day barefoot and never get injury. These shoes are supposed to simulate running barefooted
Anyway in order to find out if this is true or not Sasha and I decided to buy a pair each. We also saw the guy who sold us the shoes lining up for the marathon the next day in his five finger shoes. They obviously work for him. What was very funny about his shoes were that he had only 4 toes (two of his toes were fused together from birth) he therefore has to modify his shoes to fit his feet. I guess he has the only Vibram Four Fingers in the world.
I will report back after I have used them.
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| Weird Feet! |
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