Vibram Fivefingers

I was weeding at work, which means I was looking at all the kid's books that haven't been checked out at all in the past five years to see if we should get rid of them. One of the books was on the Tarahumara Indians of central Mexico. One of the interesting things about them is that they are renowned as super distance runners--reportedly able to run up to a 100 miles in a day. After a little internet research, I came across this article by a guy named McDougall who has also written a book ("Born to Run") about his experiences learning to run with the Tarahumara. One of his main points is that running in modern running shoes actually allows your foot and calf muscles to atrophy--leading to joint pain and other injuries. Barefoot running, like the Tarahumara do, is the way humans were designed to do it. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that there are these shoes called Vibram Fivefingers that mimic being barefoot and give you a protective layer--so your foot can move and flex without bits of broken glass getting embedded in your skin. And, um, we got some...